Published: 2025-03-25

Fat Cats and Red Pigs – Animalizations in the Language of Politics

Edyta Koncewicz-Dziduch

Abstract

Politicians in their media speeches often refer to animal terms, comparisons or idiomatic expressions containing animal names. Animalizations serve to justify unfavorable phenomena in the human world, reinforcing stereotypes accrued around animals, judged from an anthropocentric perspective. Hence, all pig-related terms refer to greed, dishonesty and manipulation while cat related ones to falseness, cunning; fat cats are synonymous with laziness, nepotism. Once used in the language of politics, animal terms happen to enter the language as ‘winged words’, phraseological units, and become the source of memes. Often associated with a  particular phenomenon or politician, such as the author of the following statement: tłuste partyjne koty, pakujcie swoje kuwety [fat party cats are about to pack their litter boxes], zatoka czerwonych świń [a bay of red pigs] or jastrząb na czele jastrzębi [a hawk as a leader of other hawks]. The aim of the article is to reflect on the function of animalisms in the language of politics, used to metaphorically express emotions and describe phenomena related to the human sphere of activity, namely, politics.

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Koncewicz-Dziduch, E. (2025). Fat Cats and Red Pigs – Animalizations in the Language of Politics. Zoophilologica. Polish Journal of Animal Studies, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.31261/ZOOPHILOLOGICA.2025.15.03

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2025
Published: 2025-04-03


ISSN: 2719-2687
eISSN: 2451-3849
Ikona DOI 10.31261/ZOOPHILOLOGICA

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Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego | University of Silesia Press

Licence CC Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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