прагматика и медиа дискурс / Teun A van Dijk - Ideology

possibiy in tercos of the notions and categories they use themselves. Indeed, using the theoretical categories of the sociologist may fully misrepresent the ways members understand and accomplish everyday activities. In other words, a theoretical account of common sense and what is taken for granted in interaction, at the same time becomes a methodological principie, namely, to study social reality as much as possible from the point of view, and in terms of, the social actors themselves.

One important implication of the notion of taken-for-granted knowledge for the study of discourse is that such knowledge tends to be presupposed. That is, such beliefs are not explicitly stated, but incorporated without challenge in new statements about social reality, because language users may assume that the recipiente have similar beliefs, and indeed similar, recognizable 'methods' to organize everyday interaction in general, and conversation in particular. This link between common sense, knowledge and discourse will be explored in more detall later (Chapter 11).

For my discussion, these various notions of common sense, and especially the Gramscian and the ethnomethodological ones, also suggest elements for a theory of ideology. For this reason, contemporary studies of ideologies tend to emphasize the implicit, taken-for-granted, common-sense nature of ideologies as %ved experiences' in the everyday lives of groups and their members. 3 In light of the discussion about consciousness and awareness in the previous chapter, this conception of ideology identifies ideologies with the non-conscious, unaware mode of ideological practices. People simply go about their everyday business and spontaneously see and judge social reality and events in terms of a belief system that is normal and unproblematical, and which they assume is shared by other group members. Only in situations of complications, challenges or other deviations from the accepted system of knowledge, may group members be (made) aware of the problematic nature of their commonsense or ideological beliefs. In such situations, however, they may have similarly commonsense 'methods' to deal with problems and try to resolve them for the situation at hand.

What is common sense?

Given my earlier discussion, this account of common sense and ideology explains only part of the facts. Where the notion of common sense is relevant, I first of all need to make it explicit. As so many 'mental' terms in the philosophy of ideology, and the microsociology of everyday life, this notion was cantil recently seldom made explicit beyond a characterization in tercos of mundane, taken-for-granted beliefs. But we have seen that there are many kinds of belief in the realm of cognition or memory, so I need to specify which ones can be seen as commonsense beliefs.

Our proposal for definition will again be straightforward — common sense is just another term for the set of social beliefs. Like the latter, it is social, shared by members of a group or community, and involves knowledge as

104 Cognition

well as opinions. 4 In those respects, common sense is a modern variant of the notion of consciousness discussed in the previous chapter.

One dimension of common sense, however, absent in the intuitive notion of consciousness is its argumentative nature. Common sense is typically referred to, especially in everyday (commonsense!) uses of the term, when arguments are said to be based on common sense.

In other words, un]ike sociologists, who take common sense as the shared knowledge underlying all mundane interaction, the commonsense meaning of common sense usually involves discourse: arguments, accounts, explanations, defences and legitimation. 5 More specifically, it connotes that such knowledge is direct, immediate, unreflected, untheoretical and unscientific, but based on or derived from everyday observation or experiences. Common sense in this sense is an implicit, naive 'theory' of the world. 6

More critically, this same explanation may therefore imply that common sense is essentially unreliable, possibly biased by social prejudices and iflusions, if not the result of manipulation. In both cases, common sense is also associated, at least implicitly, with popular or lower-class cognition, as what 'common people' think and find.

We see that common sense has many meanings and various critical interpretations, which need analytically be kept apart. Hence, we first keep its basic meaning, that is, as social representations, in order to account for taken-for-granted knowledge, but add that this may also include taken-for- granted other beliefs, such as socially shared opinions (and prejudices). They take away our jobs', is a typical example of such commonsense, prejudiced opinions.

Next, the argumentative and discursive role of common sense needs to be represented differently, in terms of the ways social representations (knowledge and attitudes) are activated, used and contextually adapted in communicative events, that is, as part of specific models. A commonsense argument, then, is an argument based on a common sense model, that is, a model of which much of the knowledge and opinions is largely shared by others. The same is true for commonsense descriptions, accounts and explanations. Such accounts are typically founded on 'what we all know on 'what everybody says', (consensus), or on commonsense truth criteria have seen it myself ).

Third, the dimension of common sense as being immediate, unreflected and untheoretical may simply be described in terms of the type of social representations being shared within a group (expert versus lay knowledge, etc.), and also in terms of the more or less unproblematic processing of social knowledge. Models are directly formed from instantations of general, shared knowledge, and not by independent, critical examination of the 'facts', nor by more complicated thinking or reasoning. Hence also the elitist association of common sense with what is taken-for-granted by the uneducated 'masses'. This need not always be a negative implication: common sense is also positively valued as an antidote against scientific sophistication, jargon, and needlessly complex explications of what 'ordinary' common

sense will tell us more directly and more transparently. In Chis sense, common sense positively reflects what is 'obvious' and 'for all to see', against the pretensions of fancy scholarship. When used in this sense, it may also be a tenet of anti-intellectualism. 7

And finally, Chis sociological dimension — who indeed common sense, and who uses it — needs to be described on the basis of a sociology of knowledge and a study of discourses (and especially argumentations and explanations) by various groups and their members. In sum, a theory of common sense examines its structures and status as social representations, its processes or strategies in thinking and its uses in social practices and discourse, and its uses by specific social groups.

In this cognitive section, we may for instance examine in which respect common sense, as representad in social representations, is being used in the formation of models: in interpretations of events, as personal instantiations of social knowledge and other beliefs, as being strategic (fast but not perfect) and, as we shall see later, as being largely implicit, that is, as not explicitly commented upon in discourse. 8 One, more romantic association of common sense as mode of thought, may be put to rest from the start: in many contemporary, mass-mediated societies with virtual universal literacy and bigh education levels, there is hardly such a thing as 'pure' common sense, in the sense of shared, unreflected, untheoretical knowledge, based only on our experiences. Precisely one of the reasons why Serge Moscovici and French social psychology introduced the very notion of social representations was to emphasize the 'popular' integration of scientific theories. 9 The best known case of this phenomenon is the now common use of notions from psychoanalytical theories.

Similarly, elites who have special access to the media, and hence indirectly to the minds of the public at large, will routinely describe and explain events in terms of implicit or explicit scholarly theories, and this will obviously also influence the social representations and explanations of other group members. It follows that although everyday perception and anderstanding may well be based on personal experiences and on a more or less unreflected application of commonsense knowledge in the construction of models, these socially shared representations also involve more or less simplified versions of scholarly knowledge. The same is true for truth criteria, inferences and argumentation. Accounts and explanations have become largely acceptable only when based on truth criteria that are themselves socially and culturally variable versions of more philosophical or scholarly ways of arguing and thinking Asking the opinion of a sorcerer, examining entrails or the fines of oné s hand, or looking at the stars, among many other remnants of old popular criteria of truth, have been largely discredited as superstition. In sum, in most modem societies, there is no 'pure and popular', scientifically uncontaminated, common sense, but rather a gradual difference with explicit, scientific, methods of observation, thinking, proof and truth criteria.

More generally, we may conclude that the difference between group beliefs and cultural beliefs is relevant for a theory of common sense, and most of what we have said aboye also applies here. That is, specific group knowledges and opinions may slowly be integrated in (or excluded from) the cultural common ground. Common sense is then more or less what we try to conceptualize with the term 'cultural beliefs', that is, the knowledge and opinions, as well as the evaluation criteria, that are common to all or most members of a culture. Like common sense, these cultural beliefs are also used as the basis for specific group beliefs, and also function as the general base of presupposed beliefs in all accounts, explanations and arguments.

Ideologies as common sense

The same applies to the identification of ideologies as forms of common sense. Depending on context and social group, ideologies may be more or less known and used explicitly in the conduct of everyday life. Thus, we may distinguish between the explicit treatises of the 'ideologues' and the ideological 'commonsensé reasoning of other group members, but should be aware that these different modes of thinking and discourse mutually influence each other. History has shown that much of what once counted as 'scientific knowledge' (e.g. about women or blacks) may now be rejected as unfounded, if not prejudiced 'common sense'. 1.

That many everyday actions are being accomplished routinely, and seemingly unreflectedly, does not mean that members are unable to make explicit at least some of the knowledge and other beliefs that are implied or presupposed by their practices and discourses. Misunderstanding, conflicts, challenges and various factors of the context may give rise to various modes of 'explication', in the double sense of the term: as making explicit, and as explanation or account.

Both the social representations on which such explications are based, as well as the nature of the explications themselves, namely, as valid and acceptable arguments, may be more or less explicit and more or less imbued with widely shared, popular versions of scientific knowledge. This may be true more often and more explicitly among members of specific (elite) groups, but my point is that because of general education and the media, such philosophical and scientific influences on 'common sense' may be fairly widespread among many ideological groups.

Thus, most members of environmental groups have a fair amount of more or less technical knowledge about the nature, the causes and the consequences of pollution. Feminists may have extensive knowledge and attitudes about gender relations, and their arguments may be based not only on the shared immediate experiences of all or most women, but also on scholarly research or intellectual argument.

Concluding we should emphasize that if common sense is identified with the general beliefs of a culture, and if ideologies as the foundation of

specific group beliefs are based on such a cultural common ground, ideologies themselves are not aforro of common sense. Indeed, the very 'common' in common sense implies that such 'sense' is being shared, and hence rather cultural than group bound. Moreover, ideologies are usually much less taken for granted than are general cultural beliefs, because they are often more explicitly taught within the group and contested and hence defended across group boundaries. People are usually more explicitly and consciously Christian, socialist or feminist than 'Western'. Only in crosscultural conflicts are people made aware of the common sense of their own culture. In other words, ideologies as defined here should not typically be identified with common sense, but rather with uncommon sense or nonsense.

11

Knowledge and Truth

Ideology versus knowledge

In many classical approaches as well as in most commonsense and political conceptions, ideologies are typically described as false, wrong, misguided, and as such opposed to true — and especially scientific — knowledge. Full discussion of the issues involved here would require a monograph by itself.

So I shall only briefly summarize some major tenets and take a position that fits the theory presented in this book, elaborating the suggestions made in Chapter 3. 1

The critical opposition of ideology and knowledge goes back at least to Marx and Engels and their conception of 'false consciousness', which implies that in specific situations and under the influence of ruling class manipulation, the working class may have misguided beliefs about the material conditions of its existence. Dominant ideologies in that case are an instrument of the ruling class which serves to conceal its power and the real socio-economic conditions of the working class. Throughout the history of political economy and sociology, similar distinctions were made, usually opposing ideology to scientific knowledge, that is, (with Durkheim) the 'sociological facts' established by social science. Until today, as we have seen before, ideology is thus characterized in tercos of common sense, as beliefs that are taken for granted, and in general with naive views of everyday life that may be at variance with the knowledge produced by

objectivé scholarship.

It is hardly surprising that these views have also met with considerable critique. Thus, it has been pointed out that the history of science clearly shows how much scientific knowledge and methods themselves may be based on ideologies that are in the interest of the elites, if only in the interest of scholars themselves. From a different, ethnomethodological, point of view, commonsense knowledge of social members has received a more positive evaluation in tercos of the practical basis of social practices, and as a viable means by which members manage their everyday lives. 2

Against the background of this briefly summarized history of the opposition between ideology and knowledge, we should finally examine the role of knowledge in the conception of ideology presented in the preceding chapters. It was assumed that ideologies form the 'axiomatic' base of the social beliefs of a group. These social beliefs may be factual or evaluative. Por the evaluative beliefs (opinions, actitudes) of a group, which may be typically

contested by other groups, it is rather easy to accept that they are ideological. But what about their knowledge? How can knowledge be ideological, and still be called 'knowledge', that is, 'true belief , in the first place, instead of being characterized as 'mere' group belief (in the everyday sense of that term) or as 'opinioñ . Or should we as sume that, since all knowledge criteria are historically and culturally variable, also all knowledge is relative and hence possibly 'ideological'? Let us examine these questions in more detall, and reformulate some tentative answers within the theoretical framework presented in this book.

Por various theoretical reasons, it was assumed that ideologies essentially involve values and therefore monitor the evaluative beliefs of groups, that is, attitudes. One question that may be raised in that case is whether ideologies may also influence non-evaluative, factual knowledge, or even whether more generally we should adopt the view that all knowledge is ultirnately ideologically based. We might call this the ideological relativism thesis, following the more general view that all knowledge is socially and culturally relative, given the historically and culturally variable nature of truth criteria that forro the basis of such knowledge. Let us examine whether this thesis can be defended within the framework of this book.

The nature of knowledge

Both in everyday life as well as in epistemology, knowledge is usually defined as justified true belief. Thus, in common sense language use, we may adequately say that we know thatp if we believe that p and if we have good reasons, evidence or proof thatp is true. That is, if called finto question, knowledge statements may have to be justified, for example in terms of culturally accepted truth criteria, such as personal observation, reliable sources (media, experts, etc.), logical inference, common sense or consensus (Tverybody knows that ...D. Similarly, again in everyday discourse, we attribute knowledge to others, rather than mere beliefs, if what others believe is true according to us, that is, if someone else shares our knowledge. On the other hand, we use the word 'belief to denote those of our own beliefs for which we have no, or insufficient, evidence, or those of others which we know to be false or about which we have insufficient evidence.

Episternology provides further conditions for (rather marginal) cases of (lack of) justification, for example when someone believes something that happens to be true, but has the wrong (non-justified) reasons for doing so. I woñ t go finto these and other complications of the contemporary philosophy of knowledge. Similarly, I shall ignore the ontological intricacies of truth and truth conditions regarding 'what is the case'. That is, I shall not further analyse the question whether truth or 'facts' may exist independently of human perception and conceptual understanding. Nor whether physical facts do exist whether or not we know them, whereas social facts are always

constructed, and hence cognitively and socially relative. In the commonsense world, things and facts are simply assumed to exist whether we know them or not. Linguistic or cognitive relativism or constructionism are not characteristic of lay epistemics. 3

We have seen that knowledge presupposes truth criteria, that is, grounds for justification, whether they are commonsense criteria in everyday life and hence a basis for the cultural common ground, or scientific ones in the specific group beliefs of scholarship. We have also seen that these criteria are historically, socially and culturally variable — what in one period, group or culture is accepted as reliable evidence of true knowledge, may be rejected as unacceptable in others. In other words, at the meta-level of a theory or philosophy of knowledge, as well as in a social and cognitive approach, knowledge is by definition relative, given the changing nature of knowledge criteria.

In the practical, everyday world of each period, group, society or culture, such relativism would be disastrous. Whether 'objectively' valid in some cases or not, people need to be able to say that some things are true and others are false, and that there is knowledge on the one hand, and (mere) beliefs on the other. That is, they take the existence of most objects and the truth of many facts of their everyday cultural and natural worlds for granted, and will allow variable types of doubt or ignorance about other things. They therefore distinguish between knowledge and beliefs, and between objectivity and subjectivity, where subjectivity is defined in tercos of personal or group beliefs that are unfounded according to us (our group) or according to the commonsense truth criteria of the shared culture. Whether epistemologically or sociologically naive or not, such distinctions work 'for all practical purposes', both for lay people, as well as for the 'professionals of truth', such as journalists, lawyers and scholars.

Ideological relativism?

Does this (simplified) account of knowledge also allow us to decide about the nature of the relations between ideology and knowledge? This first of all depends on our basic theory of ideology. If ideology is the axiomatic basis of the mental representations shared by social groups, and if ideologies vary as a function of the various interests (membership, activities, values, position, resources) of each group, the ideological relativism thesis implies that what group members know is a function of their ideology.

Obviously, in its strong form this thesis cannot be defended. There is no doubt that most of the knowledge of most groups is shared by other groups. Or rather, most knowledge is generally, and socio-culturally defined and — except for some realms of professional or expert knowledge — not in tercos of specific groups. Indeed, all intergroup communication and interaction, and even ideological conflict, presupposes a vast domain of shared knowledge. Moreover, most of this knowledge is undisputed and taken for granted, as

explained aboye. Thus, most people in contemporary Western culture know what trees, tables, cars, computers and myriad other things are, and presuppose such tremendous amount of knowledge in their everyday discourse. As we have argued in Chapter 3, most knowledge that people of different groups have is pan of the cultural common ground and hence undisputed and taken for granted. Thus, the first conclusion is that, given a group-based definition of ideology, the strong forro of the thesis of ideological relativism (namely, that all knowledge is ideological) cannot be defended without changing both the commonsense and the theoretical meanings of the concepts of 'knowledge' and 'ideology'.

But what about the weak version of the thesis? Is specific group knowledge ideologically based? The sociologically and politically informed answer to this question would undoubtedly be affirmative, possibly referring to a long history of ideologically based 'scientific facts' (for instance about poor people, wornen, blacks or gays) that obviously were in the interest of some group, namely, the white male middle class and its scholars. Many other examples can be mentioned in which what is defined or presented as knowledge are in fact false beliefs, half-truths or one-sided true beliefs that favour specific groups, and that are directed against others.

Note that this argument not only applies to false or incomplete beliefs, but also to true beliefs. Nothing, indeed, can be as persuasive as the social facts being marshalled by the civil rights movement or the womeñ s movement when it comes to criticizing discrimination and claiming their rights, as both critical scholarly research as well as fundamental litigation have shown. That is, minorities or dissident groups will focus on, and highlight their own truths, and such knowledge could thus, at least in one sense, also be called ideological.

If these arguments are correct, we must conclude that the weak version of the ideological relativism thesis is correct: some knowledge in society is a function of the ideological position or power of groups. This is especially the case when such knowledge pertains to the social position of the group itself, or if it is related to the social issues that define the ideological opinions of the group. Thus, depending on oné s view about smoking, different beliefs about smoking may be focused on, emphasized, concealed or denied. Many examples may be given from public debates about smoking, as well as about immigration, abortion or nuclear energy. Some of these beliefs may even be true (according to culturally accepted truth criteria) and hence qualify as common knowledge, but even then they may still be called partisan in the context of the other beliefs and attitudes of a group. Their 'facts' may thus not be Ours.

Knowledge or opinion?

One possible objection against Chis conclusion is that group-dependent knowledge is not knowledge at all, but opinion, so that the argument about ideological knowledge would be pointless, if not a contradiction. 4 This

argument may be supported by commonsense uses of the concept of 'knowledge'. Groups that are in conflict and participate in an ideological debate would not readily grant that what the others believe constitutes knowledge, but will claim that such beliefs are mere opinions. Por example, research on patterns of discrimination and ethnic beliefs may confirm the everyday experiences of minorities in the Netherlands, namely, that racism is endemic in Dutch society. However, such a conclusion is challenged by most Dutch (including most social scientists) as being merely an opinion, and in fact hardly more than a typical anti-racist accusation. That is, facts may be denied if seen to support the ideological position of the others, even if such facts are the result of research that has been carried out according to generally accepted scientific methods which in other research would never be challenged.

Note incidentally that the concept of 'opinion' used in such accusations has a broader sense than used in this book, where it only means an 'evaluative belief . In everyday language use 'opinion' is sometimes also used as referring to 'factual' beliefs that (others think) are false. In the rest of this chapter, I shall often use the broader, commonsense notion of 'opinion', in order to have a word that denotes all beliefs that are not true and hence part of knowledge but are evaluative beliefs or false factual beliefs.

We now are facing a dilemmálf at least some knowledge is ideological, it will in many everyday situations be challenged as not being knowledge at but merely opinion. Such judgements presuppose the general definition of knowledge, that is, that beliefs are only accepted as true if we (also)

accept them as true. In this case, 'we' may be simply (most of) the other members of a culture, society or group, or a scholar or other outsider judging the beliefs of such a culture, society or group. In other words, if factual beliefs are defined as opinions as soon as they are understood to be ideological (at least by the others), then we are back to square A, that is, that ideologies typically monitor evaluative beliefs only, and not knowledge. In fact, we would then only have general cultural knowledge, and not specific group knowledge. Following this argument, we would again have to conclude that knowledge is not ideological, simply because the cultural meaning of knowledge presupposes non-partisan belief: as soon as (even true) knowledge is socially expressed by an ideological group, it will be degraded to (mere) belief by the others.

But also this conclusion is problematical. Indeed, each side in an ideological debate may firmly believe and even be able to prove that their beliefs are true. If not, I would have to recognize that my own books on racism feature mere opinions and not knowledge that results from careful, empirical and theoretical research. Indeed, I would further claim that given such scientific criteria and my results, I 'know some 'facts' about racism in the Netherlands, whereas those who simply deny such 'facts' (according to me) are expressing merely an opinion that is obviously based on nationalist, ethnocentric or racist ideologies, and not on reliable experience or scientific research.