Ideology and discourse - Teun A. van Dijk

1 Ideology anddiscourseA Multidisciplinary IntroductionTeun A. van DijkPompeu Fabra University, Barcelona An earlier version of this book was used as an internet course for theUniversitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University) in2000. A Spanish version of this book has been published by Ariel, Barcelona,2003. An Italian version of this book, with the title Ideologie. Discorso ecostruzione sociale del pregiudizio (translated by Paola Villano) waspublished by Carocci, Roma, the authorTeun A. van Dijkwas professor of discourse studiesat the University of Amsterdam until 2004, and is atpresent professor at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, earlier work on generative poetics, text grammar,and thepsychology of text processing, his work since1980 takes a more critical perspective and deals withdiscursive racism, news in the press, Ideology ,knowledge and is the author of several books in most of these areas, and he editedThe HandbookofDiscourse Analysis(4vols, 1985) the introductory bookDiscourse Studies(2vols.)

2 ,1997) as well as the readerDiscourse Studies(5 vols., 2007). He founded 6 internationaljournals,Poetics, Text(nowText & Talk), discourse & Society, discourse Studies, discourse & Communicationand the internet journal in SpanishDiscurso & Sociedad( ), of which he still edits the latter last monographs in English areIdeology(1998)andRacism and discourse in Spainand Latin America(2005). His last edited book (with RuthWodak) in English isRacismat the Top(2000), the result of a European project on 7 EU countries,and in SpanishRacismo y discurso en Am ricaLatina, the result of a vastLatin Americanproject, withchapters on racism in 8 Latin American countries, written by local teams of st completeda new interdisciplinary study in 2 vols.

3 On the theory of context, andis planning a new book on discourse van dijk , who holds two honorary doctorates, has lectured widely in manycountries, especially also in Latin America. With Adriana Bolivar he founded theAsociaci n Latino-americana de Estudios del Discurso (ALED), in a list of publications, recent articles, resources for discourse studies and otherinformation, see his E-mail: as structure of Ideology to discourse and vice Mental Models to in Ideological discourse Propositional and interaction6. Examples7. is Ideology ?

4 We all use the notion of Ideology very often, and so donewspapers and politicians. Most ofthe time, we do not use it in a verypositive sense. We may speak of the ideologies of communism, or neo-liberalism, pacifism or consumerism, and many other-isms, but seldomqualify our own ideas as an " Ideology ". But what are ideologies exactly? Ideology in cognition, society and discourseIn thisbooka multidisciplinary introduction to the notion of " Ideology " ispresented--involving cognitive and social psychology, sociology and dis-course analysis. The cognitive definition of Ideology is given interms ofthe social cognitions that are shared by the members of a group.

5 The socialdimension explains what kind of groups, relations between groups and in-stitutions are involved in the development and reproduction of discourse dimensionof ideologies explains how ideologies influenceour daily texts and talk, how we understand ideological discourse , and howdiscourse is involved in the reproduction of Ideology in is one of the major problems of contemporary European illustrate the theoretical discussion, we shall therefore specifically payattention throughout thebookto the example of racist Ideology and how itis expressed by way of example, we shall illustrate the the-ory as well as the analytical categories with a detailed analysis of a debateon immigrationin the UK House of StructuresDiscourse plays a fundamental role inthe daily expression and reproduc-tion of ideologies.

6 Thisbooktherefore pays special attention to the waysideologies influence the various levels of discourse structures, from intona-tion, syntax and images to the many aspects of meaning, such as topics,coherence, presuppositions, metaphors and argumentation, among ' Ideology 'Thisbookprovides a multidisciplinary introduction to the notion of' Ideology ' and especially focuses on how--for instance racist--id e-ologies are expressed, construed or legitimated by discourse .' Ideology ' as a vague and controversial notionThe notion of ' Ideology ' is widely being used in the social sciences, in poli-tics, and in the mass media.

7 There are thousands of articles and books writ-ten about it since the notion was invented by French philosopher Destuttde Tracy at the end of the is how Destutt de Tracy begins his famous book, which is explicitlyaddressed to young people, because--he says-- theminds of establishedscholars are already full of "fixed ideas" that are very difficult to change:-6-El ments deId ologiePar Destutt-TracyJeunes gens, c' est vous que je m' adresse ; c' est pour vous seuls que j' cris (..)La premi re fois qu'il arrivera un de vos camarades de s' attacher obstin ment uneid e quelconque qui para tra videmment absurde tous les autres, observez-le avecsoin, et vous verrez qu' il est dans une disposition d' esprit telle qu' il lui est impossi-ble de comprendre les raisons qui vous semblent les plus claires : c' est que les m mesid es se sont arrang es d' avance dans sa t te dans un tout autre ordre que dans la v -tre, et qu' elles tiennent une infinit d' autres id es qu' il faudrait d ranger avant derectifier celles-l.

8 C' est pour vous pr server de l' un et de l' autre que je veux dans cet crit, non pasvous enseigner, mais vous faire remarquer tout ce qui se passe en vous quand vouspensez, parlez, et raisonnez. Avoir des id es, les exprimer, les combiner, sont troisch oses diff rentes, mais troitement li es entre elles. Dans la moindre phrase ces troisop rations se trouvent : elles sont si m l es, elles s' ex cutent si rapidement, elles serenouvellent tant de fois dans un jour, dans une heure, dansun moment, qu' il para t d'abord fort difficile de d brouiller comment cela se passe en we see in this quotation, for Destutt de Tracy Ideology was nothing lessthan a general "science of ideas" (the study of "how we think, speak ")

9 , something what today would be called psychology or even'cognitive the huge scholarly attention paid to the study of Ideology sinceDestutt de Tracy's book, the notion remains one of the vaguest and most"contested" concepts of the socialsciences. So, I shall begin with a defini-tion of what in thisbookI understand by ' Ideology '. Ideology as a system of beliefsAs we already see in Destutt de Tracy's writings, ideologies have some-thing to do with systems of ideas, and especially withthe social, politicalor religious ideas shared by a social group or movement. Communism aswell as anti-communism, socialism and liberalism, feminism and sexism,racism and antiracism, pacifism and militarism, are examples of wide-spread ideologies whichmay be more or less positive or negative de-pending on our point of view or group membership.

10 Groupmembers whoshare such ideol ogies stand for a number of very general ideas that are atthe basis of their more specific beliefs about the world, guide their inter-pretation of events, and monitor their social of the rather vague and ambiguous notion of 'ideas' we shall hence-forth use the term that is mostly used in psychology to refer to 'thoughts' of-7-any kind:beliefs. We thus get the following very general working defini-tion of Ideology :Ideologies are the fundamental beliefs of a group and its thisbook, I shall develop this conception of Ideology in more detail.