37.2429, Reviews: The Discursive Construction of Veganism: Leto (2026)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-37-2429. Tue Jul 21 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.2429, Reviews: The Discursive Construction of Veganism: Leto (2026)

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Date: 21-Jul-2026
From: Tamara Martin [tmmartin at neiu.edu]
Subject: Anthropological Linguistics, Discourse Analysis, General Linguistics, Sociolinguistics: Leto (2026)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/37-1531

Title: The Discursive Construction of Veganism
Subtitle: An Ecolinguistics Approach
Series Title: Bloomsbury Advances in Ecolinguistics
Publication Year: 2026

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
           http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/
Book URL:
https://www.bloomsbury.com/discursive-construction-of-veganism-9781350447769/

Author(s): Mario Leto

Reviewer: Tamara Martin

SUMMARY
In The Discursive Construction of Veganism: An Ecolinguistics
Approach, Mario Leto offers both an academic analysis of the
discursive representations of veganism and a practical toolkit for
vegan advocacy. Published in 2026 as part of the Bloomsbury Advances
in Ecolinguistics series, the book draws on critical discourse
analysis (CDA), ecolinguistics, and positive discourse analysis (PDA)
to examine how veganism is constructed, challenged, and defended
across a range of media. Leto's research question is: how is veganism
represented discursively online and in other forms of media? The
findings are revealed across two analytical chapters, along with a
theoretical introduction and a conclusion.
The introduction establishes Leto's theoretical foundations across
several sections, from a definition and history of veganism to an
overview of CDA, drawing primarily on the work of Norman Fairclough
and Teun van Dijk, before turning to ecolinguistics as his primary
analytical lens. Ecolinguistics, as Leto describes it following Arran
Stibbe, treats language as embedded in ecological systems and asks
analysts to evaluate discourse against an ecosophy, or ecological
value system. Leto’s ecosophy focuses on minimizing harm to animals,
ecosystems, and marginalized communities. The introduction also
includes a personal positionality statement in which Leto describes
his own transition to veganism, framing his insider identity as an
asset rather than a source of bias.
Chapter 2, the longest chapter in the book, documents twelve
destructive stories of veganism gathered from online news outlets,
user comments, television programs, and podcast episodes. The twelve
stories are: veganism is unhealthy, vegans are adversaries, vegans are
ignorant, vegans are aggressive, vegans are privileged, vegans are
fake, vegans are mentally unstable, vegans are sanctimonious, vegan
men are effeminate, veganism has no historical precedent, veganism is
environmentally destructive, and vegan food is unappealing. Each story
is analyzed using a consistent three-part framework: linguistic
feature identification (including modal verbs, disclaimers, appraisal,
and process types drawn from systemic functional linguistics),
application of van Dijk's social cognition theory to explain how these
features normalize meat consumption, and evaluation against Leto's
ecosophy to establish why each story qualifies as destructive.
Chapter 3 turns to beneficial stories of veganism and shifts in both
scope and method. Rather than analyzing a parallel set of stories
across similar sources, Leto analyzes three different genres:
documentary films, specifically The Game Changers (2018), Cowspiracy
(2014), and Seaspiracy (2021); vegan cookbooks, paying close attention
to five titles representing diverse cultural traditions; and Instagram
influencers, focusing on two accounts. Each genre receives its own
analytical evaluation. The Game Changers is analyzed through the lens
of a narrative framework and a hero narrative structure, drawing on
Todorov and Campbell. The cookbooks are analyzed for their use of
positive appraisal, inclusive pronouns, and cultural identity
construction. The Instagram analysis focuses on multimodal features in
addition to linguistic ones.
The book concludes with a closing chapter that links the relationship
between destructive and beneficial stories, summarizes the discursive
elements identified in both chapters, and suggests future research. An
appendix titled Linguistic Toolkit defines the analytical tools used
throughout the book and is positioned as a resource for vegan
advocates without a linguistics background.
EVALUATION
The Discursive Construction of Veganism makes a significant
contribution to the growing research on veganism and discourse. Where
this book stands out is the extent of its analytical toolkit and
making that toolkit accessible beyond academic audiences. The book's
two-fold goal as an academic resource and an advocacy tool is a
challenging feat, but Leto rises to the challenge. The Linguistic
Toolkit appendix functions as a bridge between the two goals, defining
technical concepts in plain, understandable terms. Readers approaching
the book from an ecolinguistics or CDA background will find the
analytical framework clearly applied and grounded in established
theory. Readers approaching it as advocates will find the appendix a
practical starting point.
The analytical work in Chapter 2 is thorough and well-executed. Leto's
linguistic breakdowns are detailed and informative, and the three-part
structure of each story section gives the chapter consistency.
However, the chapter has a data contextualization problem that limits
some of its claims. The majority of examples come from anonymous user
comments attached to online news articles. Leto analyzed 141 comments
from 26 articles but analyzed only 8 articles in full, and he does not
specify how many episodes of the Piers Morgan programs or The Joe
Rogan Experience were included in the corpus. More significantly, the
articles to which the comments are attached are rarely named, and the
political leaning of the source outlet, which Leto cites in his
methodological overview as a variable he accounted for, is never
referenced in the individual analyses. Since comments are responses to
specific texts, the absence of that context makes it difficult to
assess what the commenter was reacting to, and whether the discourse
identified as destructive is a function of the comment itself, the
article it responds to, or the platform on which it appeared. Leto
acknowledges that he selected the most negative examples he could find
through purposeful sampling, but purposeful sampling of anonymous
comments from ideologically non-neutral platforms calls for more
context than the chapter provides.
Chapter 3 is where the book departs most noticeably from the structure
established in Chapter 2. The beneficial stories chapter does not
mirror the destructive stories chapter in method, scope, or level of
detail. Rather than applying a consistent analytical framework across
a single data type, Chapter 3 examines three genres, each of which
receives a different analytical evaluation. The Game Changers analysis
is the most developed section of the chapter, bringing together a
narrative framework, the hero narrative, procatalepsis, and multimodal
analysis. The cookbook analysis is comparative, but covers more ground
more quickly. The Instagram analysis, while multimodally interesting,
is limited to two accounts and does not always achieve the same depth
as the documentary analysis. This is not necessarily a flaw, the use
of diverse resources in Chapter 3 reflects the reality that beneficial
representations of veganism appear across a wider range of media than
destructive ones. But readers coming from Chapter 2 expecting a
parallel structure will need to adjust to the shift in method, and the
book would benefit from a clearer transition that explains why the two
chapters are organized so differently.
The book effectively situates itself in relation to prior work on
veganism and discourse. Leto's contribution is to extend existing
scholarship beyond print and broadcast media into social media and
documentary film, to bring ecolinguistics into the analysis of
veganism discourse, and to pair the critical analysis of destructive
representations with an equally detailed examination of beneficial
ones. The focus on beneficial stories is important and
underrepresented in the existing literature, and Chapter 3's analysis
of The Game Changers in particular, is a model of how ecolinguistic
and narrative analysis can be integrated into the discourse.
For an audience of ecolinguists, discourse analysts, and researchers
of veganism, this book will be a useful and well-organized reference.
For an audience of vegan advocates with some familiarity with
linguistic concepts, the Linguistic Toolkit and the accessible framing
of each analytical section make the book more approachable than much
of the existing CDA literature. The book is less well-suited for
readers looking for a quantitative analysis of veganism discourse, as
the analysis throughout is qualitative and example-driven.
The most significant area for future development is the
contextualization of data. As noted in the evaluation of Chapter 2,
the absence of context for user comments limits what can be said about
the discourse surrounding individual examples. Future research
building on this work would benefit from a more structured approach to
documenting where examples originate, including the outlet, the
article, and the ideological environment in which a comment appears.
That kind of grounding would strengthen the already detailed
linguistic analysis that Leto provides and clarify the findings for
other researchers working in veganism discourse.
REFERENCES
Campbell, Joseph. 2008. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Novato: New
World Library.
Fairclough, Norman. 2015. Language and Power, 3rd edn. London:
Routledge.
Stibbe, Arran. 2015. Ecolinguistics: Language, Ecology and the Stories
We Live By. London: Routledge.
Todorov, Tzvetan & Arnold Weinstein. 1969. Structural analysis of
narrative. NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, 3(1), pp. 70–6.
van Dijk, Teun A. 1993. Principles of critical discourse analysis.
Discourse and Society 4(2). 249-283.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Tamara Martin is a graduate student in the MA in Linguistics program
at Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU), with a focus on discourse
analysis. Her research interests include the language of veganism and
diet culture, and the role language plays in shaping identity around
food, health, and dietary norms.



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