Analysing the News Coverage of “Pet Regret” in the UK Through the Framework of Nonviolent Communication

Bibliographic Data

ID12909302
AuthorsDiana Garrisi (Cardiff University, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume18
Issue2
Pages433-451
Publication date2023-09-28
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournalism Practice (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1751-2786 • E-ISSN: 1751-2794
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17512786.2023.2260784
OpenAlexW4387119190
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited47

Drawing on the tenets of Nonviolent Communication (NVC), this paper presents a discourse analysis of UK news coverage regarding the phenomenon commonly referred to as “pet regret”. This is an informal expression coined by mainstream media to indicate feelings of remorse experienced by individuals who acquired a companion animal during the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequently found themselves questioning their decision, leading some to consider relinquish or leaving without care their pet. This paper will discuss examples from newspapers that used a moralistic framework to depict pet owners by resorting to forms of value judgments woven into rhetorical and syntactic structures. The tone of these judgments reinforces a type of representation grounded on binary thinking, potentially encouraging classifications of people based on reductive notions of right and wrong

Covert · Feeling · Judgement · Linguistics · Mainstream · Media studies · Newspaper · Political science · Regret · Remorse · Representation (politics · Rhetorical question · Sociology · Value (mathematics · Computer Science · Law · Misinformation and Its Impacts · Psychology · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment · Rhetoric and Communication Studies · Social Psychology

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