Elite Discourse And The GM Argument–an Angle Of Critical Discourse Analysis

This paper applies the method of critical discourse analysis to analyze the media debatetexts on the topics of Genetically Modification(GM) and Genetically Modified Food(GMF)from1992to2011(mainly industry newspaper, the People’s Daily and sina.com), as well asthe multidimensional discourse analysis. The paper analyses how genetically modificationbecomes a container of a variety of categories of different dialogue groups, dissemination andconsumption from a simple term, implanting the macro social context and more mediaenvironment revealing the relationship between and social change. This paper concernsstrategies of production and reproduction of elite group about the two previous concepts, theways of realization of words control. Particularly, the main concern is about how the elitegroups with different knowledge background and organization consume produce anddistribute the GM discourses especially on the new media platform. This paper first categorizethe data according to dates, editions and sources, trying to draw the macro picture of"genetically modified" text context in our country presently. As for the premise, this paper hasselected the open and debated texts as the focal analysis, and meticulous distinguished thecore and the subprime texts, which is the focus of critical discourse analysis and tries todetermine transgenic debate to find the hidden control and power appeal in the chaos.By the end of2011, genetically modification as a media issue has been studied for nearly20years. The studies could be divided into four stages, in which there is one theme andseveral subthemes. It is the elite groups that control the direction and ways of discourseproduction. They achieve this through cooperative production, such as controlling all the wayto fight and debate about the production, consumption and distribution and reproduction"genetically modification". According to the study, the appearance of Safety discourse brokethe myth of knowledge barrier. The differentiation strategy of national macro appeal needsand the rising of public health rights awareness together construct the production ofgenetically modification dialogue group. However, the public as the vulnerable groups havenot changed their positions because of the appearance of the new media open information platform. On the contrary, the public are overwhelmed by the rich knowledge and information,and gradually the elite groups take the discourse position.