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

ABSTRACTDrawing 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.KEYWORDS: Pet regretnonviolent communicationcondensation symbolBritish pressCOVID-19value judgement AcknowledgementThe author would like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their detailed and constructive feedback.Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).