Contemporary family models take into account the changes that have occurred in the way dogs are treated, which is currently becoming more and more subjective, and have contributed to the emergence of a new structure – interspecies families. The results of these research indicate the existence of differences in the role assigned to utility dogs in contemporary families, related to the origin of the dog: adoption or purchase. Families that decided to purchase a dog treat their dog at least on a declarative level as a family member, but their attitude towards it can also be objective, as evidenced by assigning the role of an employee or athlete. In the case of families that adopted a dog, it was declared that the dog plays the role of a family member, and that emerging difficulties are treated as challenges. At the same time, the study revealed certain stereotypes regarding utility breeds that affect the fulfillment of caregiving functions towards these dogs.

This article focuses on the depiction of animal suffering in early 20th century book-long essays by non-anthropocentric philosopher Marian Zdziechowski. His works: Pesymizm, romantyzm a podstawy chrześcijaństwa [Pessimism, Romanticism and the Foundations of Christianity] (1992), O okrucieństwie [On Cruelty] (1996) and W obliczu końca [Facing the End] (1999) are discussed in three subsequent sections and my methodological approach is close reading. Zdziechowski’s views on the animal question are placed in the context of Arthur Schopenhauer’s philosophy and the Christian religion, of which this writer was both an adherent and a critic. The final section considers contemporary theories of ethics towards animals in which some echoes of Zdziechowski’s thought can be found. In particular, Richard Ryder’s speciesism and painism, as well as the contemporary theory describing the mechanisms of the transmission of violence, testify that Zdziechowski’s intuitions anticipated the Anthropocene thought as early as the 1920s and 1930s.

This article examines selected horror films featuring femmes animales – figures whose status, suspended between humanity and animality, challenges the androcentric and anthropocentric order, as noted by Barbara Creed. An ecofeminist reading of these protagonists reveals that the apparent empowerment conveyed through visual metaphors associated with animal captivity is not only superficial but also replicates patriarchal structures and perpetuates both female and nonhuman oppression. Constructions of animality, the motif of being stared at (as a living exhibit in a zoo or as the object of the male gaze), and the representation of female suffering through images of meat and cages, all contribute to a dualistic hierarchical thinking. This, in turn, devalues that which is non-male, non-human, and what deviates from the primacy of reason in the androcentric and anthropocentric world shaped by the Western intellectual tradition.

With the development of digital discourses related to animal death, such as support groups and commemorative portals, mourning for nonhuman companions becomes a more and more commonly observed sociolinguistic phenomenon. The present article is a case study of the French-language commemorative website called Amonami. The analysis, rooted in French linguistic discourse theory, is focused on the issue of pathemisation. It aims to describe how discursive factors influence expressing emotional states after losing beloved animals and to characterise linguistic means used by animal owners in this context. The study presents the scenography of the portal as a framework for enunciations, called homages (French: hommage), published on the website. The analysis also indicates the presence of various linguistic means of pathemic expression in the studied enunciations, such as metaphors, axiologically marked vocabulary, affectonymes and agentive expressions.