DOI: 10.24308/iass-2014-005

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

pxouplid@itl.auth.gr

Abstract

The Oxford English Dictionary defines pet as “any animal domesticated or tamed kept as a favorite or treated with indulgence.”

In modern Western societies pets are everywhere. In modern cities there are millions of pet dogs, cats, birds, fish, rabbits, snakes, and monkeys while modern economy includes a vast service industry that provides veterinary care, food, breeding, and assorted accessories. Looking through the historical evolution of mankind is becomes obvious that without the possession of the domesticated animals, man would have continued to be a savage; and that without the help of them, no considerable progress in civilization could have been achieved. This became possible through artificial selection, which is the selection of advantageous natural variation for human ends and it is the mechanism by which most domestic species evolved. Α fact to be considered is, as Paul Shep­pard affirms, that: “Pets are not part of human evolution or the biological context out of which our ecology comes. They are civilized paraphernalia whose characteristic combination and accommodation is tangled in ambiguous tyranny. Although looked upon with affection, even modern pets are property that is bought, sold, put down and neutered.”

Pets are commodities that many people use, like other consumer goods, as a means of constructing identities, although they are also considered members of families and serve as companions providing considerable emotional attachments and satisfactions. It is likely that because of the social and economic conditions many middle-class people make substantial emotional investments in their relationships with animal companions. The case is that humans not only attribute various mental states to one another but there is an irresistible primate tendency to generalize these attributions to pets and other animals. On one side, anthropomorphic thinking enables animal companions’ social behavior to be construed in human terms. On the other side, anthropo­morphism constitutes an evolutionary selection pressure which has defined the appearance, anatomy, and behavior of companion animal species.

The fact that pets occupy by default an equally great human need for non-human others in the contemporary urban American household is both obvious and perplexing. Americans spend over $5 billion annually feeding dogs and cats alone, while only $3 billion is spent on baby food (Beck, 1983; Pet Food Institute, 1986).

During the past three decades, the subject of relations between people and other animals has become a respectable area of research: “anthrozoology” crosses a wide variety of academic disciplines, including anthropology, art and literature, education, ethology, history, psychology, sociology, philosophy, and human and veterinary medicine. In convergence to this research field the paper is going to discuss two emergent themes from the Sociosemiotic perspective:

Harry Truman once said: “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog[1].”

In modern Western societies pets are everywhere. In modern cities there are millions of pet dogs, cats, birds, fish, rabbits, snakes, and monkeys while modern economy includes a vast service industry that provides veterinary care, food, breeding, and assorted accessories. Looking through the historical evolution of mankind is becomes obvious that without the possession of the domesticated animals, no considerable progress in civilization could have been achieved. This became possible through artificial selection, which is the selection of advantageous natural variation for human ends and it is the mechanism by which most domestic species evolved. Α fact to be considered is, as Sheppard (2003: 511) affirms, that: “Pets are not part of human evolution or the biological context out of which our ecology comes. They are civilized paraphernalia whose characteristic combination and accommodation is tangled in ambiguous tyranny. Although looked upon with affection, even modern pets are property that is bought, sold, put down and neutered.”

Pets are commodities that many people use, like other consumer goods, as a means of constructing identities, although they are also considered members of families and serve as companions providing considerable emotional attachments and satisfactions. It is likely that because of the social and economic conditions many middle-class people make substantial emotional investments in their relationships with animal companions. The case is that humans not only attribute various mental states to one another but there is an irresistible primate tendency to generalize these attributions to pets and other animals. On one side, anthropomorphic thinking enables animal companions’ social behavior to be construed in human terms. On the other side, anthropomorphism constitutes an evolutionary selection pressure which has defined the appearance, anatomy, and behavior of companion animal species.

The research is discussing mainly the U.S pet-keeping culture for methodological reasons, firstly because it’s a phenomenon that is related to modern U.S society; secondly there are many scientific studies related to various aspects of pet-keeping in this country; and thirdly, there are statistical data from different institutions related to pet ownership and the social, personal and economic dimensions of this practice. As it will be shown in the process this paper will focus mainly on dogs and cats, as they constitute the vast majority of pets in the modern U.S. Additionally, the bibliography examined is almost exclusively based on case study results relying on answers provided by pet owners whose pet is usually a dog or a cat. The paper constitutes an overview and it is divided in two parts: the study of the meaning(s) and the function(s) of companion animals in modern U.S society.

1. Companion animals' mediation between nature and culture

1.1. The human/pet relationship: The sign of the pet

What kind of meaning is connected to the pet world[2] and by what kind of mechanisms?

For Gottdiener and Lagopoulos (1986: 2–3):

Semiotic studies sign relating to the recognition of the social and natural environment of an individual and of his/her internal world.[…]The universe of signs includes: the non-physiological part of perception; conception; scientific modes of discourse; and the value systems, or the socially constituted world views of social subjects, which are in function of social interaction. […] Material objects are vehicles of signification, so that the symbolic act always involves some physical object as well as the discourse on it.

Gottdiener and Lagopoulos (1986: 8) also indicate that: “Conceptual stimuli in the environment play a more fundamental role as physical forms are assigned certain significations.” In this case the material objects or physical objects are companion animals (or pets) which act as stimuli as they have become symbols. Every companion animal (or pet) is transformed, at the level of denotation, into a signified of his own function, as well as of another function which is symbolic, it signifies on a second level also, that of connotation. Connotative codes are social products produced by groups and classes involved in practices related to companion animals.

The present socio-semiotic approach is a materialist inquiry into the role of the ideology related to companion animals in everyday life seeking to account for the articulation between semiotic and non-semiotic social processes in the ideological production and conception of companion animals. The organization of companion animals handling is a social product and the production of companion animals is governed by social processes characteristic of social formations that involve non-semiotic as well as semiotic processes, because social practices mold and interpret companion animals according to codified ideology. Thus, a socio-semiotic analysis at the level of production of companion animals, involves identifying the role of connotative and denotative codes of mediation of companion animals productions. It becomes clear that the pet world is the end result of the intersection between non-semiotic and semiotic processes, which are mediated through companion animal ideologies and it can be approached by an inquiry of the semiotic conception of companion animals by the socially stratified groups of synchronic users. A socio-semiotic analysis of the pet world therefore consists of a series of combined aspects of study related to the decomposition of companion animal or pet sign according to the model of Hjelmslev, in an attempt to identify explicitly the social languages of ideological systems and the non-semiotic environment (Gottdiener and Lagopoulos 1986: 16–17).

From this methodological approach a socio-semiotic analysis of a pet sign system should be constituted by cultural research to document the form and substance of content:

Substance: attention will be given to historically and culturally established signification related to companion animals, in other words the evolution of pet-keeping in western societies.

Form: considerably case study research is necessary to document the codified ideology structuring the signifiers of companion animals. At this point it has to be mentioned that to establish the codes the research used a corpus of published texts from various disciplines – anthropology, sociology, psychology, cultural, consumer, medical and veterinary studies – examining the discourse of pet owners as appeared in studies and surveys. This task at this point it cannot be considered exhaustive.

On the other hand, observational data should be collected on both the substance and form of the expression:

Substance: description of material companion animal fauna invested by signification should be obtained, in this case of cats and dogs, which serve as companion animals.

Form: attention should be given to the specific companion animal elements which are the vehicles of signification, physical appearance, breed, species, etc.

The conception of companion animals is filtered through and finally shaped by a cultural grid. This grid is composed of a set of semantic components, each one of which is a specific manner of approaching and apprehending companion animals. The semantic components of this grid used to apprehend companion animals, constitute a semantic code. The codes which belong to the same general semantic field constitute a code set.

The research has indicated 10 codes grouped in 5 code sets:

Economic codes

The code of pet-care is used to make reference to expenditure animal keeping costs.

Social codes

The code of social support is used to make reference to the subject’s sense of receiving certain types of social support from his pet.

The code of social status is used to make reference to the connection of the owner’s pet with social status.

The code of property is used to make reference to legal or pet-welfare aspects of pet-keeping.

The code of control is used to make reference to behavioral aspects of the pet owned, as perceived by the owner.

Functional codes

The code of companion animals (pet-code) is used to make reference to the function of pets to serve as company to their owner.

Personal codes

The aesthetic code is used to make reference to physical appearance of the pet animal related to owner’s aesthetic preferences.

The experiential code is used to make reference to experiences related to the interaction with the pet animal

The code of pet anthropomorphism is used to make reference to the pet animal, as bearer of human characteristics, as a person.

Taxonomic codes

Taxonomic species code is used to make reference to the species of the pet animal, in this case a cat or a dog.

1.2. Non-semiotic material practices related to companion animals: The evolution of pet-keeping

There are no pets in nature; an animal only becomes a pet by the human owner’s choice. Thus, a “pet” is an artificial category of human conception. The Oxford English Dictionary records the earliest use in reference to a pet animal in 1539 (Walker-Meikle 2012: 2).

Pet-keeping appears to be a remarkable relationship between humans and animals, for the pet is often allowed into personal spaces, lives in physical proximity with its owner, often enjoys of luxury food and it is decorated with special accessories, while nothing is asked but to provide companionship. Pet-keeping as a practice was established in the middle Ages. In the nineteenth century pet-keeping reveals a system of control related to the arrangement of the imaginary in ordinary life adapted to the bourgeois expectations of self. As Sheppard (2003: 512) discusses:“Domestic animals were “created” by humans by empirical genetic engineering over the past ten thousand years. […]They and all captive animals are like organ transplants: healthy for us but cut out of their own organic fabric. […]Pets, being our own creations, do not replace that wild universe.”

The modern pet dog constitutes a clear example: the eating habits, the walking time, the sleeping place and the grooming of the animal are totally under human control. Its health and its wellbeing through veterinary care depend entirely on the owner, as well. Pet dogs are provided with human names, clothing, grooming and health care to a level that owners start to see them as quasi‐human, as members of the family in the modern domestic environment. The modern pet dogs don’t have wild origins; they have always been tamed animals for being a product of breeding. In modern society a companion animal often constitutes an impulse item as the number of animal images accessible to viewers across the world beyond boundaries of language and culture through mass media and advertizing has drawn attention and reshaped our conception of animals.

1.3. The semiotic perspective of pet-keeping.

1.3.1. The key aspect of pet-keeping culture: Pet anthropomorphism

Humans use animals to symbolize and dramatize aspects of their social experience and individual fantasies, because they can simplify the narrative to produce effective allegorical meaning. In the mass media culture globalized community of today photography, film, television and Internet only have transformed the way they are told.

For Asquith (1984: 138), anthropomorphism in the context of animal behavior means: “the ascription of human mental experiences to animals”. Normally an animal, with certain physical and behavioral characteristics, must be singled out as a promising prospect for anthropomorphism. The distinctive mark of the animal is self-locomotion; they are not just one symbol system out of many, for Daston and Mitman (2005: 13): “they are symbols with a life on their own.”

As Serpell (2005: 123) suggests: “anthropomorphism appears to have its roots in the human capacity for so-called reflexive consciousness, which is the ability to use self-knowledge to understand and anticipate the behavior of others.” Thus, for Michell (2005: 102): “anthropomorphism involves claims the centrality of human concepts and abilities to classify behaviors across ontological categories.”

In the semiotic perspective of gestural communication Greimas (1987: 31–34) indicates:

Since the human body, as signifier, is treated as configuration is normal to expect that its mobility will be considered as mainly creating positional gaps and this polarization of movements will end up in the parallel categorization of contents. In addition to the fact that on the plane of content this valorizes what are commonly called attitudes, at the expense of gestures, we have also accounted for the semiosis that characterizes communicative gestuality. This consists in establishing a correlation between a phemic category belonging to the plane of expression and a semic category at the plane of content.[…]The acknowledgement that the correlation between the categories of expression and those of content remains constant within a given cultural context enables us to set out our observations on communicative gestuality by starting from considerations regarding content, and not, as would normally be the case for any other semiotic text, from the plane of expression.

For Greimas (1987: 38): “The presence of the animal world and the narrative sequences of taming make it possible to interpret this form of mythical gestuality, as an archaic universe still surviving in modern times”. In this case the research is focusing on the gestural programs of pet keeping investigating the semiotic models and structures responsible for the attribution of meaning to certain pet animal behavior while interacting with their owners. Greimas (1987: 45) concludes that: “Considered from the point of view of cultural projects, the different gestural programs seem to be closed discourses whose content analysis can explicate only a particular type of narrative structure. They can be represented as models of a practical or mythical knowing-how-to-do whose organization could account for a certain mode of existence of so-called economic and cultural structures.”

Thus, the conception of the gestural communication of pet animals perceived by humans indicates a semiotic model, an anthropomorphic code that could be named, code of pet anthropomorphism. This code seems to be the result behind the interpretation of the behavior of the pet animal and it’s taming in cultural terms by a semiotic process. From the socio-semiotic point of view, anthropomorphic codes in the conception of companion animals are specific, scientifically accessible claims of similarity between humans and nonhumans. Thus, there must be substantiated by evidence that there are similar structures responsible for generating meaning. To this hypothesis further specifically focused socio-semiotic case study is required.

Most authorities now agree that pets are serving as a form of social support. Cobb (Serpell 2005: 125) defined social support as “information leading the subject to believe that he is cared for and loved, esteemed, and a member of a network of mutual obligations.” Thus, the socially supportive potential of pets encoded in the social support code in the discourse of pet owners should therefore underlie on the ability of the animal to produce meaning by behaving in ways that make their owners conceive that the animal demonstrates care, love, high esteem towards them and depends on them for care and protection. It becomes apparent that the human-pet relationship serves primarily for the transfer or exchange of social meaning between people and animals than a rather economic or utilitarian function.

As Serpell (2005: 127) coments:

Bonas’s study (Bonas, McNicholas and Collis 2000: 209–236) clearly suggests that her subjects had no difficulty describing and evaluating their nonhuman companions using precisely the same relational parameters as those developed and used to describe relations with humans. By implication, then, these people must have interpreted and evaluated the various behavioral signals of social support they received from their pets as if they were coming from fellow human beings.

This leads to the conclusion that the anthropomorphic code is closely related to the experiential code of pet owners practicing pet-keeping in modern world and to the social support code from the same individuals as a result of the interaction with their pets. For Hirschman (1994: 626), as the urban household is primarily intended as a human habitat, pet animals are permitted within it to the extent that they conform to behavioral practices and respect boundaries regarded from the owner as positive and acceptable. This is encoded in the control code that is used to make reference to the conception of the behavioral aspect of the animal’s presence in human habitat.

For Albert and Bulcroft (1988: 544) pets are an economic paradox because they do not do useful work, and they cost substantial amounts of money and time from their owners. The code of pet-care is used to make reference to economic and other type of cost – time for example – required from the pet owner as responsibility related to the animal.

Regarding the functional code of companion animals (pet code), Hirschman (1994: 620) asserts that:

[…] the majority of animals act as companions to their human owners.[…] Animals may act as friends and partners to their owners. They may serve as children or as child substitutes for childless couples. Finally, animals may act as extensions of the consumer's self, case in which the owner projects his or her own personality onto the animal and absorbs the animal's nature into himself or herself.

Albert and Bulcroft (1987) confirm that pet attachmeni[3] is highest among single, divorced, widowed, and remarried people as well as among childless couples, newlyweds, and empty-nesters, while pet anthropomorphism is high among single, divorced, remarried people and childless couples. Albert and Bulcroft (1988: 550) also affirm that pets tend to be viewed as family members by people who live in the city and pet ownership, the roles and functions of pets vary over the life cycle and by family type.

1.3.2. A striking issue: Τhe pet personality

The Oxford English Dictionary on-line defines the word pet:

1. (Noun):A domestic or tamed animal or bird kept for companionship or pleasure, 2. (Verb): Stroke or pat (an animal) affectionately[4].

It is estimated that the total number of pets owned in the U.S is that of 396 from which the cat population is of 95.6 millions (24%) and the dog population is of 83.3 millions(21%) [5]. Apparently becomes reasonable to believe that the cat and the dog are the protagonists of the pet world in the U.S.

The domestic dog (Canis Lupus Familiaris) is a member of the Canidae family of the mammalian order Carnivora.

The domestic cat (Felis Catus) is a member of the Felidae family of the mammalian order Carnivora.

The human ability to attribute meaning to certain animal behavior and physical appearance, especially in the case of pets, conditions our conception at a connotative level. In this way certain animal elements, which are the vehicles of signification, tend to generate semantic structures, which constitute aesthetic and control codes in pet discourse, which are culturally regulated. The relation of these codes with the code of pet anthropomorphism, as described previously, constitutes the concept of the so-called pet personality. At the level of material processes related to the production of pets, anthropomorphic selection in favor of physical and behavioral traits that facilitate the attribution of human mental states to animals has significant impact on the anatomy, the physical appearance and the behavior of pets. Results of a study (Fratkin and Baker 2013) indicated that people attribute different personality characteristics to dogs based solely on physical characteristics (coat color and ear shape) and that there is some evidence (Delgado, Munera & Reevy 2012) that human perception of coat color is an indicator of domestic cat personality.

The combined aspects of the studies revised indicate a close relationship between the aesthetic and the control code with the experiential and social support codes that reveal the dimensions of the encounters with an animal that fulfills the companion animal owner’s expectations and produces positive feelings. The anthropomorphic code seems to be the core code in the structure of this code system, fact that is also reflected in the content of the surveys questions. As a general overview the results for the average middle class urban pet owner of a dog or a cat can be summarized in this scheme of codes:

The pet code system

In this scheme the positive poles of the binary relationships underlying in the codes used by pet owners in pet related oral discourse respond to the concept of the pet in modern society. Regarding the code of pet-care, low importance is given to costs and expenditures from the pet owners, thus it does not appear playing a significant role. The code of social status is related to breeds and other types of pet functions, as pet contests and breeding activities, as well as it concerns upper class pet owners, thus at this point its appearance does not play an important role, requiring specific focused research to detect the structure of the system describing these phenomenons.

2.The commodification of animals in market industry: The case of the pet culture[6] in the U.S

Statistical data provided by American Pet Products Association (APPA) indicate that 140 million U.S. households own a pet and APPA estimates pet spending will reach $55.72 billion this year[7]. Pets in modern U.S. society seem to be no longer a part of wild nature. They are a middle class commodity[8] that everyone wants and they are humanized to the point that they have the same food, clothes and beds as humans. As Mullin (1999: 215–216) affirms, pets are used like consumer goods, as a means of constructing identities although they serve as companions providing considerable emotional attachments and satisfactions and are also often considered members of families. Companion animals as facilitators of social interactions increase self-defining situations, as the self is a social construction built on the information derived from a person's social relationships. However, the connection between companion animals and the owner's self concept is direct, involving a material practice at the non-semiotic level, and mediated at the semiotic level of connotation, involving the code system for generating meaning previously discussed. Thus, for Sanders (1990): “owners usually define their pets as “persons” with whom they share lasting, intimate, and emotionally involving relationships”.

In the consumer society the companion animal function fulfils itself in the precision of its relationship to the real world and to human needs, while transcending its main function in the direction of a secondary level within the universal system of signs. From this semiotic process the companion animal nature results dominated, as the semiotic system is constantly converting it into culture. Thus, the pet being the object merely of needs and of the satisfaction of needs has become an object of consumption external to the relationship that it signifies. By this process the relationship is no longer directly experienced it is transformed into a sign and thus consumed. In this system the signified is the void of this relationship, the relationship that is lacking. Pets constitute the signs of the absence of nature in modern life; while at the same time constitute connotations of the absence of relationships in the consumer society. Pets are used for the development and definition of consumer's sense of self in an attempt to overcome the sense of self-emptiness by creating a shared meaningful relationship.

Α research (Gosling, Carson & Potter 2010) published in the journal Anthrozoös presents scientific evidence that there are personality differences between “cat people” and “dog people”, revealing “a widely held cultural belief that the pet species – dog or cat – with which a person has the strongest affinity says something about the individual's personality”.

As a customized animated commodity in consumer culture, the pet provides to the consumer comfort, protection, love, health, companionship, and a self definition which can be bought, sold, or traded. A clear example from a modern society, with a lot of similarities with the U.S society, is given in a published study( (King, Marston and Bennett 2009) regarding the ideal Australian pet dog, where the researchers indented to identify what constitutes an ideal dog in the present day based on a number of behavioral and physical characteristics. The results indicated that for Australian people is important that the companion dog is being medium sized, short haired, de-sexed, safe with children, fully housetrained, friendly, obedient and healthy; to come when called, not to escape from their property, to enjoy being petted and to display affection to their owners. It becomes clear from the results of this study that the closer model to the ideal Australian pet dog is a fully controlled robot-dog.

Many unexplored aspects of the ideology of pet-keeping in any modern culture may be accessible via socio-semiotic analysis. There is a tremendous amount of texts devoted to pets to be utilized within a consumer behavior context, while Internet, television and print advertisements present a variety of pet-related products which encode cultural beliefs about the meaning of pets and promote norms related to their care. Pets appear regularly in motion pictures, television programs, and, especially, in children's animation programs. A systematic socio-semiotic analysis of these texts would reveal important cultural concepts related to companion animals in the modern world.

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