Ideological Meanings of Language

Abstract

Ideology is sometimes considered only as set of ideas, as Karl Mannheim’s relativist theory would put it, for instance. It is also sometimes considered more critically as set of ideas whose political aim is to help sustaining domination, by concealing the contradictions present in society. Drawing on Jan Blommaert, Norman Fairclough, Susan Gal and Antonio Gramsci, this paper investigates the link between ideology, meaning and power. Then, the issues of text, context and agency will be examined, firstly in relativist theoretical approaches to ideology and language, and secondly in critical approaches. It will eventually be shown that the two stances are in conflict about the meaning of the word ‘ideology’ itself, which brings to light the discrepancy between the implications of descriptive and critical research.