прагматика и медиа дискурс / Teun A van Dijk - Ideology

Notes

Chapter 1

1 Indeed, few scholars today would daim to practise a 'science of ideas', although there are some who come close, such as French sociologist (pbilosopher, etc.) Edgar Morin, whose four-volume sequence La méthode, ends with a book on Les idées: leur habitat, leur vie, leur moeurs, leur organisation, in which also the 'organization of ideas' (the object of the discipline of 'noology) is studied (Morin, 1991). Of course, there are historical antecedents here, for example, in phenomenology, such as Husserl's book Ideas (Husserl, 1962).

2 Indeed, most studies of ideology in philosophy and the social sciences have a prominent historical dimension. This is less the case for work on ideology in psychology, anthropology and linguistica, which in general are less historically oriented. Since many of these studies will be referred to more specifically in the next chapters, we here only mention the most prominent books that provide such a historical background: Abercrombie et al. (1980,1990); Billig (1982); CCCS (1978); Eagleton (1991); Freeden (1996); Kinloch (1981); Larrain (1979); Manning (1980); Meszaros (1989); Rosenberg (1988); Rossi-Landi (1978); Seliger (1976, 1979); Skidmore (1993); Thompson (1984, 1990); Zcitlin (1994).

3 For a review of this 'restrictive' concept of ideology, see especially Seliger (1979), who critically discurses the work of Bel (1960), Lipset (1960, 1972), Sartori (1966, 1969) and Shils (1958), among others. See also the critical comments of Geertz (1973) on the pejorative use of the concept of ideology.

4 See Marx and Engels (1974).

5 For a discussion of these contemporary changes in the theory of the relations between superstructure and infrastructure, see, for example Wuthnow (1992).

6 A particularly interesting collection of studies documenting this evolution of European neo-Marxism within British cultural studies, and especially within the work of Stuart Hall, may be found in Morley and Chen (1996).

7 One major study that advocates such a more inclusive concept of ideology, and one of the few systematically theoretical approaches to ideology, is that of Seliger (1979), who defines ideology as a 'group of beliefs and disbeliefs expressed in value sentences, appeal sentences and explanatory statements'. These sentences may refer to moral and technical norms, and express views that relate to human relationships and socio-political organization. Such an ideology may legitimate 'concerted action for the preservation, reform, destruction or reconstruction of a given order' (Seliger, 1979: 119-20). Many of these contemporary debates have their roots in the detailed theoretical analysis of Karl Mannhcim's Ideology and Utopia (1936), which also discurses the distinction between evaluative and non-evaluative ideologies. Also Mannheim thus emphasizes the role of ideologies in the context of the 'collective action' of diversely organized groups.

8 For discussion on such political belief systems, see Chapter 2, and Chapter 2, Note 8, for references.

9 See, for example, Rosenberg (1988) for such a psychological (Piagetian) approach to ideology. See also the references in the next chapters.

10 Of course, as also Geertz (1973) points out, ideologies are not always rooted in, or devised in order to legitimate, interests and power. They may also be a response to social problems and contradictions ('strains') as lived and experienced by social members. At the same time, the analysis in Chis book responds to a critical condusion of Geertz that both

approaches are indequate while failing to formulate in detail how the trick is really done', that is, how exactly interests are related to ideology, and how social contradictions are 'symbol ically expressed': 'Both interest theory and strain theory go directly from source analysis to consequence analysis without ever seriously e xamini g ideologies as systems of interacting symbols, as patterns of interworking meanings' (Geertz,1973: 207).

11 One example of a recent text in which ideologies (of contemporary movements) are simply defined as 'discourses' is Garner (1996: 15).

12 Note that 'social cognition' in this book is not used (only) in the restrictive sense of the information-processing approach, prevalent especially in the USA to the study of the social mind (for survey, see, e.g., Fiske and Taylor, 1991), in opposition to the various European approaches in social psychology, for instance on social identity, social categorization or social representations (see, e.g., Fan and Moscovici, 1984; Tajfel, 1981; Spears et al., 1997). Rather, I advocate an integration of these two approaches. For discussion and further references see the chapters in Part I.

13 Such ideologies of opposition or resistance may of course be given a different name. Thus, for instance Mannheim (1936) distinguished ideologies and utopias, the latter being belief systems 'for a better world' which we also will call ideologies.

14 This position, currently formulated especially within the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), has been explained in more detail in van Dijk (1993b). See also Fairclough (1995), Wodak (1989, 1996).

15 For a discussion of the curcent relevance of Critical Theory and its relations to ideology, see, for example, Agger (1991, 1992); Bailey (1994); Rasmussen (1996). For a discussion of this critical study of ideologies and social inequality in the 'postmodern' world, see Simons and Billig (1994). See also Larrain (1994) and Morley and Chen (1996) for a discussion of the postmodern critique of ideology. See Ibáñez and Iñiguez (1997) for a collection of work in critical social psychology. Note though that the term'critical' in these various studies has rather divergent meanings and applications.

16 This does not mean, of course, that there is no carlier work on racist ideologies, but only that there is as yet no work on racist ideologies that uses the framework proposed here. See, for example, Note 6 of Chapter 19, for scientific ideologies of race. For the relations between discourse and racist ideologies, see, for example, van Dijk (1984, 1987); Wodak et al. (1990), and references in various later chapters.

Chapter 2

1 One of the (vast) arcas of research that will be largely ignored in this book is that of the listory of ideas', and related fic1ds of historical inquiry, such as the study of 'mentalities'. See, for example, Lerner (1991).

2 The mind-body debate keeps haunting cognitive science, if only as a pseudo-problem. For recent discussion, see, for example, Warner and Szubka (1994). Interestingly, most psychologists simply ignore the question about the 'existence' of the mind, and go about their everyday business of describing and explaining psychological phenomena with the tacit assumption that minds do exist. The ongoing debate, especially among philosophers and neuroscientists mainly involves the relations between mind and brain. See, among many other contemporary studies: Clancey et al. (1994); Kosslyn and Koenig (1992); Pinker (1994); Searle (1992, 1995).

3 For an explicit social-developmental (Piagetian) approach to ideology, see Rosenberg (1988).

4 Such'interactionism' may be found in certain directions of research in ethnomethodology and discursive psychology, in which the (socially) 'real' things we need to deal with are interaction and discourse. That is, whatever'mental' things may exist, they are relevant only through their expression or formulation in social practices, text and talle (Coulter, 1979, 1983, 1989; Edwards, 1997; Edwards and Potter, 1992; Harré, 1995; Harré and Stearns,1995; Potter and Wetherell,1987). See also the critique of (mental) 'representationalism' in Shanon (1993).

These directions of research deserve detailed analysis, which is, however, beyond the scope of this book. I hope to return to this issue in a future publication. As is shown in this section of the book, I recognize the relevance of a proper cognitive analysis, but agree with the discursive psychologists that discourse and interaction play a fundamental role in the acquisition and the structures of 'mental' phenomena, such as knowledge and ideologies. Also, I fully agree with them that most of traditional social psychology and of course most cognitive psychology has ignored the relevance of the influence of social structures in psychological studies.

5 The nature of beliefs and their relation to knowledge continues to be discussed mainly in epistemology, and much less in psychology itself, as is often the case for such fundamental notions. See, for example, Kornblith (1994); Lehrer (1990). We shall later come back to the discussion of belief systems in social and political psychology.

6 For a review of discussions on the nature of emotion, see, for example, Frijda (1987); Ortony et al. (1988).

7 For classical and recent studies that define our current thinking on mind and memory, see (among many other books), Ashcraft (1994); Barsalou (1992); Cohen et al. (1993); Kintsch (1977); Neisser (1982); Solomon et al. (1989); Tulving (1983).

8 Many cognitive approaches to memory and beliefs (see Notes 5 and 7) assume such a network representation, even when they (also) use propositions for practical purposes of description. A more recent, neurologically inspired reformulation of the network idea may be found in connectionist cognitive psychology (McClelland and Rumelhart, 1986; Rumelhart and McClelland, 1986). Here the linear processing metaphor of classical computers is replaced by the parallel processing metaphor of 'neuro-computers'.

9 The question of basic beliefs is here related to that of 'basic acts', which also has been discussed in psychology. See Newtson (1973). For a philosophical analysis of basic actions (using an example similar to the one we used — about the Balkans), see Searle, 1983: 99-100).

10 The nature and structure of such ideological (and other) belief systems have been studied by, for example, Abelson (1973); Carlton (1984); Converse (1964); Little and Smith (1988); Tetlock (1984, 1989); Wegman (1981). For the difference between such approaches and cognitive psychological approaches to beliefs, see Quackenbush (1989).

11 Among the theorists of ideology who reject mere study of belief systems and who plead for a combination with social, interactional, dimensions, is Rosenberg (1988).

12 See., for example, Geertz (1973); Oberschall (1993); Wutbnow (1989).

13 For a discussion of this debate (about the linguistic relativity thesis), see, for example, Lucy (1992).

Chapter 3

1 A classical study of political belief systems is Converse (1964). For current discussions and critique, see, for example, Iyengar and McGuire (1993); Lau and Sears (1986).

2 The limerick opens Salman Rushdie's book London: Pan, 1987.

3 See Tulving (1983) for a classical theory of episodio memory and its distinction from semantic' memory.

4 For the 'cleeper' neuroscientific approaches to the architecture of the mind and its various constructs, see the notes in the previous chapter.

5 As we shall see in more detall later, part of social memory, namely, knowledge, tends to be studied by cognitive psychologists, whereas other socially shared beliefs (such as attitudes) are the domain of study of social psychology. Social memory is currently studied especially in cognitive social psychology (Devine et al., 1994; Fiske and Taylor, 1991; Forgas, 1981; Resnick et al., 1991). Although most studies of social cognition in the USA are oriented towards cognitive psychology (an 'individualistic bias' criticized by more socially oriented social psychologists), this love is unfortunately hardly returned by the cognitive psychologists, who generally ignore the many forms of lot (social) cognition'. This situation is among the

many explanatory factors why much of contemporary psychology (and the same is trae for cognitive science) is socially and culturally rather underdeveloped. It is especially under the inspiration of Soviet psychology that the socio-cultural study of cognition has been able to find a small, but important, niche in Western (and especially US) psychology (see, e.g., Hickmann, 1987; Wertsch, 1985; Wertsch et al., 1994).

6 Within the framework of his sociology of knowledge, Mannheim (1936: 2) already emphasized that ideologies cannot be explained in terms of personal beliefs, but have a social nature. In his argument he also uses language for comparison to show that although language may be used individually as 'speech', people use a language as a system that is socially and historically shaped. At the same time, Mannheim wams that the notion of social thought does not imply that there is something like a 'group mind'. Thus, in his words, ideology is the 'style of thought' of (the members) of a group (p. 3). He distinguishes between particular (personal, individual) ideologies, for example as distorted views of reality arising from people's life situation, on the one hand, and inclusive, total conceptions of ideology, which are the ideologies of an age or a group. The latter are widely diverging thought systems, which give rise to totally different modes of experience and interpretation (p. 51).

7 One of the authors writing on ideology who emphasize that ideologies are a group characteristic is Scarbrough (1990).

8 See, for example, the contributions in Lau and Sears (1986) for discussion about whether or not ideologies actually exist as 'belief systems'.

9 The notion of 'factual belief is of course a theoretical one, not a commonsense notion, given the fact that in everyday language use 'beliefs' are associated with doubtful knowledge or (mere) opinions, so that 'factual beliefs' would be a contradiction. We use the notion in order to emphasize the general notion of 'belief, and in order to be able to differentiate between different kinds of belief. See also the discussion in Chapter 11.

10 For various approaches to the discourse marking of evidentiality, perspectiva and opinion, see, for example, Biber and Finegan (1989); Mayar, (1990); Schieffelin (1996).

11 This is the approach advocated by discursive psychology. See, for example, Edwards (1996) for detail.

12 For a detailed discussion of che tradicional notion of attitude, see Eagly and Chaiken (1993). Note that most traditional approaches to attitude make no clear distinction between social and personal opinions, or specific and general opinions. Jaspars and Fraser (1984) criticized che individualistic approach to attitudes in much of social psychology, and uscfu ly remind us of che fact that che original notion of attitude refers to socially shared beliefs of a group. This will also be my approach, thereby adding that such social attitudes (e.g. about abortion or nuclear energy) are not isolated beliefs, but complex structures We shall come back to che notion of 'attitude' and its structures in che next chapter.

13 There is now a considerable literature in this kind of discursive, rh torical and social constructionist psychology. For some key texts in which diese claims are formulated, see, for example, Billig (1987, 1991b, 1995b); Billig et al. (1988); Edwards (1997); Edwards and Potter (1992); Harré (1995); Harré and Gillett (1994); Potter (1996); Potter and Wetherell (1987).

14 One theory of 'social representations' is usually associated with che work of Serge Moscovici (Paris) and his followers. See, for instance, Augoustinos and Walker (1995); Breakwell and Canter (1993); Farr and Moscovici (1984). For an account of ideology in terms of social representations, see Aebischer et al. (1992); Augoustinos and Walker (1995). The French theory of social representations, however, is more specific than our general use of che term (as socially shared beliefs), and especially applies to mundane, commonsense uses of scientific knowledge in everyday life, for instance che lay uses of psychoanalysis. There has also been considerable critique of che notion of social representation. See, for example, Jahoda (1988) and che reply by Moscovici (1988).

15 The notion of habitus was introduced by French sociologist Pierre Bourdicu. See, among many of his writings, for example, Bourdicu (1985, 1988, 1990). For (sociological) critique, see, for example, Alexander (1995).