ABSTRACT
Part I of this book discussed the categories of participants – the 'major players' or 'stakeholders' as they are called in the jargon: politicians, scientists, journalists and companies, with a chapter devoted to examples of the language of each in turn. There is one more category to come, notionally the most powerful in a democracy, and variously labelled, as in other topical debates, as 'the public', 'people', 'us', 'consumers', 'communities', whose views we shall consider briey in Part III. In Part II of the book, however, our attention shifts from who is speaking to what is being said, and how linguistic choices lead us to see GM in particular ways. The purpose is to review the arguments and the language which we have already encountered, and try to dig beneath the surface foliage of words to uncover the roots of philosophical and political premises beneath.
