Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Pets using “talking buttons” to ostensibly tell their owner about their thoughts and needs have become a huge success on social media. With buttons that upon activation play a prerecorded message, these devices are marketed as tools in teaching human language to animals in order to allow them to “speak their minds.” This article investigates these practices of technologically mediated human-dog interactions through the analysis of social media videos and examines the claim that these button-based interactions are illustrative of animals’ language acquisition. This article concludes that “talking buttons” in human-dog communication should rather be understood as semiotic assemblages in which meaning is collaboratively constructed through the dynamic, situated interaction of bodies, linguistic resources, objects, and touch.
Source: Signs and Society
DOI: 10.1086/728033
Author: Miriam Lind
Institution: European University Viadrina
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,550
OpenAlex ID: W4394746384