Language as Justice: Naming Animal Reality

Sor Juana was acutely aware that language shapes reality—that how we speak determines what we can think and how we act. She challenged the language of her time that positioned women as naturally inferior, demonstrating that linguistic categories are imposed, not natural. This applies directly to animals: our language systematically reduces them to utility. We use meat industry terminology ('livestock,' 'harvest,' 'production') that obscures living beings; we speak of animals in third person, denying them subjectivity. Sor Juana would recognize this as a justice issue. Renaming—calling animals by names acknowledging their individuality, referring to them with pronouns recognizing their subjectivity, using language that captures their actual capacities and experiences—becomes a practice of moral recognition. The way we speak about animals creates the conceptual space where moral consideration either flourishes or withers. Careful, truthful language about animal reality is not mere semantics but foundational ethical work.