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Inger Lassen
Abstracts
Genetically Modified Language
In addition to its inherent interest and importance, the
debate over GM food provides many insights into other
areas of contemporary dispute as well. This talk argues
that the case being made for GM exemplifies a number of
significant trends in institutional and corporate
discourse, and in public democratic discussion, which
can be partly captured through linguistic and discourse
analysis. In particular it focuses upon the rhetorical
entanglement of GM issues with the “war” on terrorism,
and the war on Iraq, and upon how religious strands in
arguments both for and against GM, relate to the
ideological divisions between the Islamic and Western
worlds.
Drawing upon the results of two consecutive research
projects, and the speaker’s recent book Genetically
Modified Language (Routledge 2004), it examines in
detail how, during the years 2002 and 2003, instances of
language use by politicians, scientists, corporations,
supermarkets and journalists interwove disputes over GM
science and technology with other obsessions of those
years.
All that glitters is not gold -
case-study of landmine field testing operations in
Angola
In a case-study I have looked at discourses reflecting
the testing of a method for landmine detection - a
method invented by a small Danish biotech firm, Aresa,
which genetically engineered a roadside weed,
watercress, to turn red when its roots absorb small
amounts of nitrogen dioxide emitted from landmines.
Focusing on two communicative events,
a TV broadcast and a report, I have looked at some of
the argumentative structures used and how these
structures enable different ideological orientations.
Consequences of Tene Transfer
Commonplaces in Risk Talk: Face
Threats and Interaction
Many studies and projects on risk
perception and communication assume that people can
simply be told what the risks really are, and given the
ability to assess comparative risks, and they will make
appropriate calculations. But the experts are often
disappointed by public responses, and attribute them to
ignorance, or the inability to understand the statistics
involved in assessing risk. In this paper I start with
focus group conversations about various uncertain
dangers, including GMOs, and argue that talk about risk
is interactionally problematic. There is often a face
threat to the speaker or hearer or others, and talking
about risk involves projecting a line in relation to the
person to whom one is talking. People talking about
risks have a range of devices for dealing with these
potential face threats, including attributions,
narratives of experience, questions about the basis for
knowledge, and jokes. In this paper, I will focus on
commonplaces used in risk talk, general,
taken-for-granted lines of argument, such as comparisons
of the greater and lesser, or past fact and future fact.
The study of commonplaces can tell us both about
formulaic language in discourse analysis, and about
vernacular discourses of risk.
The unlucky potato - Study of
consumer risk perception in regard to a GM potato using
Mental Models
The second generation of GMO aims at providing consumers
with food that has a clear health benefit such as rice
with enhanced nutrient levels or potatoes with a lower
level of natural toxin. The new generation with health
enhancing attributes is predicted to reduce consumer
scepticism toward use of GMO in food production, but a
new and ongoing study on consumers’ risk perception in
regard to a GMO potato reveals that other barriers for
acceptance of GMO food exist, barriers such as personal
eating history.
The Transfer of GMOs through Food
Aid
This presentation will be an
introduction to the topic of the provision of GMOs
through Food Aid. Since 2000, the transfer of GMOs
through food aid, from the North to the South has been
of great concern. The discussion will centre on the
different actors and motivations involved in providing
GMO food aid.
Information on the seminar guests
Guy Cook was appointed
to a Chair in Language and Education at the Open
University in 2005.
He holds an MA from the University of Cambridge, a PGCE
and MA from the University of London, and a PhD from the
University of Leeds. He has worked
as an English language teacher in Egypt, Italy and the
Soviet Union, and as a lecturer at the University of
Leeds. From 1993-1997, he was head of Languages in
Education at the London University Institute of
Education.
He is co-editor of the journal
Applied
Linguistics (with Gabi Kasper at the University of
Hawaii). He is an academician of the Academy of Learned
Societies for the Social Sciences, BAAL nominee to the
virtual college of the ESRC, and a member of the
advisory board of the Oxford Advanced Learner's
Dictionary and several journal editorial boards.
He has published widely on discourse
analysis and the teaching of language and literature,
and has been an invited speaker at many international
conferences. His research interests are: discourse
analysis, the theory and practice of language teaching,
literature teaching, semiotics, text accessibility,
language rituals, and the communication of controversial
technologies.
Most recently his research has focused
upon critically analysing arguments for GM crops and
food.
Cook, Guy (2003). Applied
Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cook, Guy (2004). Genetically Modified Language: The
Discourse of Arguments for GM Crops and Food.
London: Routledge.
Cook, Guy, Pieri, Elisa & Robbins, Peter T. (2004). 'The
Scientists Think and the Public Feels': Expert
Perceptions of the Discourse of GM Food. Discourse &
Society 15(4): 433-449.
Greg Myers is best known work has focused on the
social context of written academic texts, especially in
science, treating such issues as politeness, cohesion,
narrative structure, commonplaces, and illustration,
drawing on frameworks from the sociology of scientific
knowledge. His current work is on expression of opinions
in talk, particularly in focus groups and consultation
processes; the approach is largely through conversation
analysis.
He has contributed to such journals as
Social Studies of Science, Written
Communication, Applied Linguistics,
College English, Science in Context,
Journal of Pragmatics, History of Science,
Science, Technology & Human Values, ESP
Journal, Discourse Processes, Discourse
Studies, Language in Society, Text,
Media Culture & Society, and Environment and
Planning A. He has been on the Editorial Boards of
the journals Text, Applied Linguistics,
Written Communication, Science as Culture,
ESP Journal, ESPecialist, and Language
Teaching Research.
Myers, Greg (1990). Writing
Biology: Texts in the Social Construction of Scientific
Knowledge. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Myers, Greg (1994). Words in Ads. London: Edward
Arnold.
Myers, Greg (2004). Matters of
Opinion: Talking about Public Issues. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
