A project has been underway in human-animal studies to redefine anthropomorphism from being viewed as an absolute fallacy to a linguistic habit that may or may not be used fallaciously. 1 This project has often taken form as resistance against mechanomorphism, i.e. the habit of attributing mechanical properties to nonmechanical entities. Those who avoid analogies that use human terms in referring to non-human animals, the argument goes, will instead use mechanistic ones to make those analogies, because we inexorably do make analogies. In order to avoid comparing obviously living animals to dead machines, we should instead make anthropomorphic projections. Animals would then be acknowledged as fully living beings with agency and a certain authority. The meaning of anthropomorphisms. Anthropomorphism is the habit of using terms salient for human traits to refer to non-human traits. The term thus implies a distinction between human beings and other beings, which makes it a position that is increasingly questioned. With increasing intensity, the human/non-human dichotomy is being deconstructed, linguistically blurred, analytically criticized, or simply discarded in human-animal studies. The disruption of the human/non-human dichotomy invalidates many conventional habits of communicating about animals. As a consequence, the contemporary academic movement of human-animal studies that is characterized by such relativization of "the animal" demands better ways to talk and think about nonhuman animals.

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