Ideology A Multidisciplinary Approach Teun A. van Dijk 1 S AGE Publications London • Thousand Oaks • New Delhi Teun A. van Dijk 1998 First published 1998 Ah rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the Publishers. SAGE Publications Ltd 6 Bonhill Street London EC2A 4PU SAGE Publications Inc 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd 32, M-Block Market Greater Kailash — I New Delhi 110 048 British Library Cataloguing in Publkation data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0 7619 5654 9 ISBN 0 7619 5655 7 (pbk) Library of Congress catalog record available Typeset by Photoprint, Torquay Printed in Great Britain by The Cromwell Press, Trowbridge, Wiltshire Contents Preface vii 1 Introduction Part I: Cognition 2 Ideas and beliefs 15 3 Social beliefs 28 4 Structures and strategies 53 5 Structures of ideologies 65 6 Values 74 7 Mental models 78 8 Consistency 90 9 Consciousness 96 10 Common sense 102 11 Knowledge and truth 108 12 Identity 118 13 Social cognition 126 Part II: Society 14 Ideology and society 135 15 Groups 140 16 Group relations 161 17 Elites 172 18 Dominant ideologies? 179 19 Institutions 186 Part Discourse 20 The relevance of discourse 191 21 Discourse structures 200 22 Context 211 23 Reproduction 228 24 From cognition to discourse 235 25 Persuasion 243 26 Legitimation 255 27 Ideological discourse structures 263 vi Contents 28 The ideology and discourse of modern racism 277 29 Conclusions 313 Notes 321 References 341 Index 366 Preface Most scholars have a number of dream projects in mind: topics they have always wanted to investigate and write about, but for various reasons never did. I have many such unrealized acadernic dreams. For many years, an innovative study on the relations between ideology and discourse has been one of them. Ideology has been dealt with in literally thousands of books and articles, but (as many other authors also conclude) its defmition is as elusive and confused as ever. So, to write a book that would specifically deal with the complex relations between ideology and discourse is more than a challenge: it is pure hubris, especially since such a book should of course begin with a proper theory of ideology. How could I possibly contribute anything new and interesting given such an enormous literature? Not surprisingly, therefore, it soon turned out that the theoretical compo- nent of such a study would itself be a major undertaking. One single book would barely be enough to explore the many issues, concepts and disciplines involved in the analysis of ideology, let alone the relations between discourse and ideology. Nevertheless, I accepted the challenge, and this book is the first instalment of this major enterprise. It discusses some of the fundamental concepts of such a new, multidisciplinary theory of ideology, and sketches the overall outline of the ways ideology is expressed and reproduced by discourse. The overall theoretical framework for my approach to ideology may be sum- marized by the triangle formed by the concepts Cognition, Society and Discourse. That is, first, the status, internal organization and mental func- tions of ideologies need to be studied in tercos of social cognition. Second, the conditions and functions of ideologies are obviously not only cognitive but also social, political, cultural and historical. And third, ideologies are formed, changed and reproduced largely through socially situated discourse and communication. Instead of simply adding results from psychology, the social sciences and discourse studies, however, these three central concepts have to be reformu- lated and integrated into one theoretical framework. Discourse should be explicitly related to the structures and strategies of the personal and social mind, as well as to those of social situations, social interactions and societal structures. In the sarne way, also cognition should be linked with both discourse and society, thus serving as the necessary interface by which social structure can be explicitly related to discourse structure. viii Preface The vast majority of studies of ideology (whether Marxist or non-Marxist) are rooted in the social sciences and pay extensive attention to ideologies in relation to class, dominant groups, social movements, power, the political economy or, more recently, to gender and culture. They have paid less attention to the cognitive and the discursive dimensions of ideologies, however. Indeed, classical work hardly analyses the details of the 'ideas', 'beliefs' or 'consciousness' assumed to constitute an ideology. Even most contemporary approaches ignore the advances in current cognitive science, and, vice versa, most cognitive science is barely interested in questions of the mental structures and functions of ideologies. This is why I pay more attention to this cognitive dimension of the theory, while emphasizing that ideologies may well be located in the mirad but that this does not mean that they are therefore less social. Though usually of later vintage, extant work on discourse and ideology does of course emphasize the important role of text and talk in the (re)production of ideologies. To my knowledge, however, among the many studies of ideology, some of which also deal with language or discourse, there is not a single one that details how exactly ideology shapes text and talk, and conversely, how it is formed, acquired or changed by discourse and communication. As part of the more social and political component of the theory, and establishing an explicit link with my previous big project, this book will occasionally use racism and racist ideologies as an illustration of the theoretical argument. This does not mean, however, that I offer a fully fledged account of racist ideologies, which would need to be accounted for in a separate monograph. However, whereas throughout the book my comments on ideology, racism and discourse will be rather general, Chapter 28 offers a concrete case study of a recent text about race relations in the USA, namely, Dinesh D'Souzá s book The End of Racism. A muldisciplinary theory of ideology can be accomplished only by reducing its complexity. I am not a psychologist, a sociologist or a political scientist. This means that my overall perspective and organizing con- ceptualizations will often be those of discourse and discourse analysis. There are worse biases, given the fundamental role of discourse in the formation and expression of ideology as social cognition and in the reproduction of ideologies in society. At the same time, it is obvious that this book cannot do, redo or undo the relevant substantial work that has already been done in the social sciences. As suggested, this book is the first result of a bigger project. It sketches the overall framework of the theory. In later studies I hope to detall each of its main components, namely, those of social cognition, social interaction and societal structures, as well as the structures of discourse involved in the expression and reproduction of ideology. These studies will also feature concrete empirical studies of the relations between discourse, cognition and society, as well as more detailed reviews of the relevant literature. Preface ix I may disappoint sorne of the readers whose notion of discourse is exclusively associated with the more literary, philosophical or postmodern notions of 'discourse' or 'text' After more than thirty years, the study of discourse has become a multidisciplinary field, featuring sometimes highly explicit and detailed theories of structures and functions of text and talk. Unfortunately, many fashionable approaches that currently refer to 'text' or 'discourse' ignore these advances, and for that reason offer an unsuitable basis for a theory of ideology. Even in a theoretical book like this, I highly value accessibility for scholars and students from different disciplines. This mean that esoteric jargon will be avoided, and theoretical terms only introduced and explained where necessary. Many of the notions dealt with in this book have been discussed in sóinetimes rather technical earlier studies. In order to be able to construct an integrated theoretical framework, many details had to be ignored in favour of the overall outline of the theory. I hope to be able to pay attention to these details in the following studies in this series. There is another way in which this book differs from much other work on ideology: it barely looks back. Many studies, as is customary in philosophy and sociology (and much less in, e.g., psychology and linguistics), are commentaries (on commentaries) on the classics, from the French philo- sophes and Marx/Engels to Lukács, Gramsci, Althusser, Foucault and Habermas. (For detail, see the excellent introductions and historical over- views by Larrain, Eagleton and Billig, among others.) In this book I want to go beyond such a history and philosophy of ideology, and integrate new ideas of contemporary discourse studies, lin- guistics, cognitive science, political science and new developments in the other social sciences. In other words, in order not to get entangled in endless debates with the classics, I have left such debates to the many other authors who engage in them. Instead, I present a systematic, analytical study, in which the old debates and current other studies of ideology play a role only in the background, in the footnotes and in the references. This of course does not mean that I think most earlier work on ideology is irrelevant. On the contrary, there are many studie s whose theories, concepts and empirical results are also suitable for my own project. However, in the first, theoretical book of this project, I prefer to focus on the oyeran framework and present that as clearly and analytically as possible, without extensive comments on, discussions with, or references to the vast amount of earlier work.