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It’s generally understood that ideology shapes how the social fabric of a society develops and functions and that it can influence decisions about policy, lifestyle, behavior, and decision making. What is less understood – or more accurately, hotly debated in academic circles - is what this means and how it occurs. One supposition suggests that it happens through discourse. In essence, this thought suggests that discourse is the expression of ideology and only though use and expressions does it become ideology [Price, 1993].
Whether one agrees with this depends on how he or she defines
ideology. But then, as soon as a definition is chosen, the ideological
affiliations of the one doing the choosing becomes apparent, thus
biasing the answer in accordance with those ideologies, rendering it
only one opinion among many. Whether one agrees also depends on how
one perceives self and the “emotional significance and importance”
[Stryker, 1980; cited Akbar, 2003] assigned to the groups that one
feels part of, as well as where one fits into the larger society.
That said, though, Price is indeed correct.
To begin to explain why Price is correct, we need first to look at the
concept of ideology, which at its core appears to be a belief system
among some members of a larger group as opposed to an entire society,
although this too is debated as is how discourse is constructed and
interpreted.
Teun van Dijk defined ideology as “social representations shared by the
members of social groups” and distinguished it from cultural knowledge,
which he defined as a pre-ideological belief system shared by all
groups across a society necessary for communication to occur [20004].
In this sense then, ideologies are beliefs that members of a subset
within a culture share. He also suggested that Using this definition,
we can look at the belief in the right to free speech in the United
States and the United Kingdom and the almost desperate belief in the
autonomy of the individual in the US as pieces of cultural knowledge
since they are “embedded in words, stories, and in artifacts”
[D'Andrade, 1995, p. xiv] throughout the society and have persisted
over time as “common ground for all social representations of all
(ideological) groups” [van Dijk, 2004]. On the other hand, the belief
that whites are superior to blacks, that Jesus is the son of God, or
that one’s actions should never harm others are ideologies since not
all groups within a culture may share them and since these are more
readily changeable than is knowledge, albeit that the change occurs
slowly.
However, Billig, who viewed ideology more as something secured by
habit and custom, took issue with Dijk’s definition. He suggested that
any definition of ideology must also “indicate that under certain
circumstances widespread social beliefs become so distorted that they
are insufficient for understanding the social conditions which have
produced such beliefs” [1999]. Of course, here he is referring to the
Gramsci’s theory of hegemony that occurs when dominant groups or
“historic blocs’ - bound as much by ideological ties as by shared
economic interests - accept or believe that an ideology is
commonsensical and thus look at it as cultural knowledge [1971] which
of course indicates that they have forgotten what conditions led to the
acceptance of those beliefs. However, in doing so, they also then
“propagate values that reinforce their control over politics and the
economy” [Raphael, 2003] via access – as a dominant group – to the
media and thus most inhabitants of the larger society. An example here
could be the ideology of capitalism and the “fact” that those who
ascribe to it as a belief shared by all who matter no longer understand
or remember that at its foundation was a division of labor, a desire by
the ruling class to keep its power, and a ploy to subscribe to man the
right to own property, thus instilling competition [Hegel, 1821].
And it is this idea of hegemony that brings us to the role that
discourse plays in socializing ideology. Looking at ideology, as
Thompson explained, is “in some part and in some way, to study language
in the social world [...] It is to study the ways in which the
multifarious uses of language intersect with power, nourishing it,
sustaining it, enacting it [1984, p. 2]
To demonstrate this we need only look at one small example. When
Billig provided a brief review of his study of Philippino sugar barons,
he wrote that his study “necessitate[d] taking the views and ideas of
these elites seriously and treating their values and norms with a kind
of distanced respect rather than knee-jerk disdain” [2000]. It is in
that statement that the problem of defining ideology – and the
perspective and ideological groundings of the definer - create
problems. By implying that “elites” (capitalists) are to be treated
with disdain he immediately situates his views into a rather Marxist
ideology, which is also evidenced by his choice of words, such as
“barons”, “elite”, and “cultural materialism” [Billig, 2000]. By using
this rhetoric in his discourse, not only does he imply membership in a
Marxist-leaning sub group, but also by using the exact same phraseology
inherent in the ideology of that group, he helps to nourish and sustain
that ideology. In doing so, he has fulfilled the three elements that
Walford saw as essential for a belief to be an ideology: 1) it must be
able “to distort thinking and deprive it of objectivity”; 2) it must
effect some groups but not others; and 3) it must be able to make
holders of an ideology “sometimes at lease unaware of their condition”
[1977]. In this instance, Billig distorts thinking by applying a good
versus evil concept onto the groups of laborer and baron which fulfills
the first element, which also puts him into the category of “serving to
rationalize the vested interests of some group: [Berger, 1966, p. 54],
an oft-cited criteria for an ideology. In addition, Billig likely will
not gain the confidence of the capitalists, thus not affecting them,
which fulfills part two of Walford’s list; and he seems somewhat
unaware that his use of language is problematic, thus also meeting the
third criteria and certainly fitting into can Dijk’s idea that
“ideological discourse is generally organized by a general strategy of
positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation
(derogation)” [2004], which brings us back to the idea of hegemony.
If we look first at cultural knowledge as opposed to ideology, and
return to the commonsense belief in free speech, we see in the United
States at least a growing use of discourse using that phrase that
argues against its importance and in fact suggests that although the
right exists in the U.S. Constitution, the current time, the social
situation, has changed so drastically that it is necessary to rethink
the concept. This is how ideology begins: a dominant group takes a
commonsense belief – a representation of shared knowledge – and begins
to cut it apart by showing it in contrast and opposition to other
shared beliefs. For instance, consider the following, written by the
American Civil Liberties Union: “in attempts to squelch dissent, the
government has attacked the patriotism of its critics, police have
barricaded and jailed protesters, and the New York Stock Exchange has
revoked the press credentials of the most widely watched television
network in the Arab world. A chilling message has gone out across
America: Dissent if you must, but proceed at your own risk” [ACLU]. In
this case Gramsci’s historic bloc [1971], similar to Fairclough’s
dominant “ideological discursive formation,” is looking to
“’naturalize’ ideologies, ie., to win acceptance for them as
non-ideological ‘common sense’” [1985, p. 739], by appealing to other
ideologies such as patriotism and market economies.
Looking at this phenomenon more closely will explain that indeed
discourse is ideology and that ideology only comes to be through use
and expression, but to do so we must start with two piece of American
cultural knowledge: free speech is a good right and loyalty to country
is important. Although it could be argued that these are ideologies in
that some in the United States may not believe them, that would be
incorrect. The beliefs were written into the country’s Constitution,
have become part, as Giddens said of ideologies [1979], of the “social
structure [with] traditions, institutions, moral codes, and established
ways of doing things” [cited Shuler, 2003], and thus have been held by
a vast majority of its citizens for several hundred years – making them
more of a common sense, commonly held belief system even if it did stem
from ideology.
Then when the country waged war on Iraq, some of the American, acting
upon their right to free speech, dissented. However, the historic
bloc, the IDF, the U.S. government if you will - perhaps because so
many citizens in other countries were also dissenting – wanted to quell
the dissent and so began “challenging existing orders of discourse”
[Fairclough, 1995, p. 95], one of the ways to build ideology. Thus,
although the government had prided itself on allowing its citizens the
right to free speech – and therefore dissent – it now saw that it
become time to view that as an ideology rather than cultural knowledge
but to do so would require much talking, a different way of viewing,
and of then getting that message out to the public so that they would
begin to reshape their ideas. Thus, they would need to “provide
definitions, theoretical paradigms, and frameworks within which
meanings are constructed” so that “their broad consensus on major
issues at [this particular] juncture in history” [Karim, 1993] would be
mirrored by the populace.
Thus, when “White House spokesman Ari Fleischer also warned
Americans to ‘watch what they say’” and “conservative commentators like
Bill O'Reilly suggested prosecuting war protesters as ‘enemies of the
state,’” and since “hundreds have been arrested for exercising their
constitutionally protected freedoms, and some have lost their jobs or
been suspended from school” [ACLU], the general public started to
rethink and begin to believe. One reason this occurred so easily, as
Stich [1983] noted was because “our everyday (folk psychological)
concept of belief attributes beliefs to others on the basis of presumed
similarities to ourselves, rather than on the basis of strict
identities” [cited Pateman, 2005]. And certainly, believing one’s self
to be similar to the powerful ones in the country who were overtly
espousing – loudly – the commonsense knowledge of loyalty and
patriotism became an important thing to do – if even for
self-preservation.
Another way to show the role that discourse plays in dissemination
and adoption of ideology is to look at work in gender studies. Perhaps
one of the most recognized works here is that of Carol Gilligan. In
her attempt to demonstrate that a masculine belief system where power
reigned was not the only ideology nor even one that suited women, she
held numerous interviews with girls and women and then painstakingly
transcribed and analyzed the texts as well as the body language used
during the interviews. She found that the women’s voices - when they
were able to speak simply in a subgroup of women and view the
importance of that membership as more important than being a member in
the larger male-dominated world - drew attention to a more nurturing
way of looking at the world, where interrelationships and dependence on
others rather than hegemonic ideals became important [Brown et al,
1988; Gilligan, 1982]. And in this instance, this use of discourse as
stories and analyzed stories and measured words became one of the
foundations of the ideology of feminism. In turn, this led to a spread
of feminist ideology even to the business world, where women became
more cognizant of why the men always talked more and why the plays for
power dominated as “ each speaker tries to grab a turn at talk and
tries to locate themselves within a hierarchy” [Mills, 1997]. It was
because the dominant group had perpetuated its ideology of competition
being best and leading to success and for women to achieve success
within that sphere or situation, they needed to adapt to that form of
speech [Mills, 1997].
Thus, although ideology may be a vague concept and might become easily
confused with cultural knowledge or facts, it seems clear that ideology
comes about through discourse – through a dissemination of ideas that
are received and interpreted by those willing to believe because they
want to be part of the dominant (read “better”) group.
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