Ideology
Ideology refers to the values and attitudes we all share towards such things as ourselves, others and institutions. Ideologies are general or cultural ways of thinking that form the foundation of the many important ‘belief systems’ that are adhered to by groups or whole societies. They form a society’s and individual’s ‘world view’ or ‘mind set’ concerning how things are and ought to be. A society is a group of people who share certain key values and ideas; these values and ideas are called that society’s ideologies.
Texts are created by speakers and writers who share society’s beliefs concerning ‘what is right’ and ‘what is wrong’ or about ‘the way things should be for the best’ in society. These ideologies mw be ‘hidden’ because they seem ‘natural’ or ‘common sense’, as the result of ‘progress’ in our ‘advanced’ society, and so on.
If we closely examine and consider some important ideologies, it can be seen that those ideas act to reinforce the structure of our society. Some thinkers – called Marxists – conclude that this might not be a healthy thing for a society as it helps maintain what they call society’s status quo – ideas that maintain the existing social hierarchies and power structures (with, for example, the wealthy holding the reigns of power, and the poor being attached in important ways to those reigns, perhaps?).
This ‘political’ way of considering the effect of ideologies arose in the theories of the key nineteenth century philosopher, Karl Marx. Marx recognised that those with power naturally enough wish to hold on to their status (those who ‘own the means of production’, i.e. the powerful, he called the bourgeoisie lesser mortals are the proletariat or the masses). Marx thought that the bourgeoisie were able to create and reinforce particular ‘ways of thinking’ that would act to reinforce and maintain a society’s status quo and hence, existing hierarchies of status and power.
Ideas that ‘maintain the status quo’ are referred to as a society’s dominant or prevailing ideologies. An example of such an idea might be, ‘He deserves to be rich because he’s worked hard for all he has’ but this ignores the plight of millions who work even harder but stay poor. The point of ideological thinking is just that – it ignores, hides, sidelines, and ‘disappears’ those groups whose ideas it does not support.
Marx felt that such ways of thinking act not only to keep the powerful in power but also to create the conditions necessary for the masses to justify their own lower position in society. The means by which ideas can support the status quo is called hegemony. Prevailing ideologies become a part of us as we grow up we become ‘conditioned’ into thinking that the way our society operates is for the best. This ‘social conditioning’ is created through the family, school, religion, law and – very importantly for language study – the mass media indeed, the media receive much of the focus of Marxist criticism because it is considered a major means through which powerful elite groups can increase their hegemony over others. It is hegemony that causes us to view our capitalist, consumerist ‘social-democracy’, with its hierarchies of status and power, its elitism, its individualistic self-centredness, its poverties and its suffering… as ‘the best of all possible worlds’.
In studying a text for its hegemonic or ideological power, you must learn to look for what is termed ‘ideologically loaded’ language. Such language is that which has judgemental value as well as meaning. Look out for such language and consider its seductively persuasive effect as it subtly ‘ideologically positions’ you as reader. Many ideologically loaded words have their judgmental value because their meaning is relational: they exist as ‘binary pairs’, e.g. ‘master/mistress’, ‘housewife/working mother’, ‘middle class/working class’, ‘freedom fighter/terrorist’, ‘hero/coward’, ‘normal/abnormal’, ‘gay/hetero’, ‘feminine/feminist, ‘The West/the East’, etc. Some linguists maintain that all language – all meaning – is an ‘ideological construct’.
