IES Nº 28 LINGÜÍSTICA DEL DISCURSO / DHG 1

DISCOURSE AND IDEOLOGY

Discourse = language put to use, language performed, cf. ‘langue’ - the socially shared linguistic system or
code (Saussure).
Discourse is language use conceived as social practice. It is a way of signifying a particular domain of social
practice from a particular perspective. Social practice exists in a dialectical relationship with social structure
and with the wider culture.

On the one hand, discourse is shaped and constrained by social structure – by factors such as class, status,
age, ethnic identity and gender which in combination differentiate individuals and contribute to ascribed social
identities and the relationships between people. Social structure also includes institutions, and in particular,
important institutions such as law, the media and education. Discourse is also shaped by culture – each culture
has its own cultural code or way of translating between conceptual maps and signs (Hall 1997). Through
enculturation, individuals acquire cultural know-how: they learn the conventions for representation within the
culture - systems of classification giving shape to each culture’s conceptual maps, as well as the conventional
uses of particular signs (words, gestures, visual images) to signify concepts.
On the other hand, discourse helps to constitute social identities, social relationships, and systems of
knowledge and belief. […]

Knowledge about the production and interpretation of discourse types

[…] Ideologies and certain broad sociocultural patterns shape the nature of the production and consumption of
discourse at the level of discourse practices, the effects of which appear in ‘cues’ that appear in texts. It is at the
level of discourse practice that language users make use of discourse types and genres. Discourse practices can
be conventionalized and homogeneous or creative in terms of the combination of genres and discourses,
creating discourse hybridity. An example of a highly conventionalized discourse practice is the writing of a will.
Television advertisements on the other hand show great heterogeneity and creative combination of elements
from other texts, discourses and genres.

Fairclough makes use of the concepts of intertextuality and interdiscursivity. Intertextuality refers to the
traces in a text of the discourse practices associated with other texts and text-types. The term was coined by
Julia Kristeva, building on the ideas of multivoicing in texts developed by Bakhtin. At the simplest level, a
speaker/writer picks up and reuses the words of another person either in the same communicative event or
from another context. The speaker/writer may also pick up character-types or plots or mix registers or codes
which are associated with particular contexts of language use. The receiver of the text should be able to identify
the incorporation of pieces of other texts and interpret the significance of their use in the particular situational
context. For example, a postmodern parody of a fairy tale may borrow from the plot and character conventions
and the language of traditional fairy tales, mixing this with conventions and language from contemporary texts
of other kinds, such as TV sitcoms, ‘The Simpsons’, and so on. The use made of other texts may be ironical
but need not be. We ‘appropriate’ the voices of others and in so doing can make them our own and eventually
they become a part of our own habitual ways of making meaning.

The idea of intertextuality is valuable for understanding how texts are creatively transformed as they pass from
source to receiver along chains of distribution. This can be seen in media transformations of news: how a

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speech or a statement by an individual is transformed in the report made of it, and subsequently worked on
over the course of a news story that can last several days or weeks.

Fairclough also uses the term ‘interdiscursivity’. Here, he is trying to capture the idea that producers of texts
make use of discourse practices which belong to various orders of discourse. Orders of discourse is a higher-
order concept which has to do with the totality of discourse practices associated with an institution, and the
relations between them. When a text is framed in such a way that it incorporates types of text from other
orders of discourse, then we can speak of interdiscursivity.

An example of an order of discourse is ‘policing’. Policing as a part of the social order embraces a wide range
of types of discourse or discourse practice, e.g. interviews with witnesses of crime, charging individuals with
crimes, making written reports of crimes. Each of these discourse types is an element in the ‘order of discourse’
of policing. So an order of discourse is a network of practices representing different discourses, different ways
of making meaning. Each discourse type positions the participants in particular ways, so social identity and
relations are keyed by the choice of a discourse type.

It would be tempting to say that particular types of discourse practice are ways of enacting existing power
relations and reproducing power differences. It is true that types of discourse tend to involve placing
participants in particular subject positions and we could say that locally, discourse has the potential to reinforce
power inequalities. In the case of a police interview with a suspect, there is no doubt that the police interviewer
will be in control of the interview, in terms of asking the questions, having the authorized power to interrupt,
to offer minimal information in response, and so on. This is also true in a less obvious way in the case of a
written text; here, the text postulates a subject (the ‘ideal reader’) who is capable of linking together its many
diverse meaning elements both explicit and implicitly stated. This act of interpretation by the reader involves
understanding the presuppositions and metaphors which give meaning to the text, and using all the cues
provided to build a coherent interpretation. Discourse in a sense contributes to constituting the subject. Insofar
as a particular discourse involves placing a participant in a subordinate position, it might seem that this would
necessarily contribute to reinforcing power imbalances and in this way feed back to reinforce existing social
structure.

Yet Fairclough warns against any assumption that the conventions of a given discourse type will necessarily
result in the reproduction of power inequalities. First of all, an order of discourse is a complex network of
differing discourse types. To judge the effects on society, we must take account of the whole network of
discourse types composing the order of discourse, not just individual discourse practices.

Secondly, discourse should not be seen only as a site of reproduction of existing power relations and ideologies,
but also as a site of power struggle. Part of the struggle concerns the discourse conventions themselves. The
norms and conventions can be changed through putting together codes and elements in new combinations
which give new ways of signifying. Through interdiscursivity, old conventions can be rendered problematical
and may eventually give way.

An example of this is the way that traditional gendered subject positions have been altered to incorporate new
thinking about female equality. Another example is what Fairclough calls the ‘democratization of discourse’,
which involves the reduction of overt markers of power asymmetry between people of unequal institutional

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power – teachers and pupils, parents and children, employers and workers. Some ways that this is manifested is
through exercising control less through direct orders and constraints on rights to speak than through indirect
requests and suggestions, and in the appearance of strategies that appear to give subordinate parties greater
expression of views and influence on decision-making.

The configuration of voices in a news report offers an interesting case of ideologies operating through
discourse. Media news reports weave together the voices of a number of people representing these by direct
and indirect speech. Through repeated use, these changes at the level of discourse practice become
‘naturalized’. When this happens, discourse itself is actualizing the transformation and helping to constitute the
new changed social order.

Long-range social changes are driven by changes in ideology. But at a local level, change in actual discourse
practices can be cumulative in effect. We can think of styles of interaction as being to some degree fluid, and
the performance of subject positions as being similarly capable of negotiation in discourse. Any social actor has
the possibility of reconfiguring his/her social identity through discourse and this will affect the nature of the
positioning that is worked for. It is important to recognize the importance of performances of identity in
interaction, bringing into play such factors as social class, gender, nationality, ethnicity, and subcultural
membership. In this way people produce different ‘performances’ of a given position and may actually
reposition themselves within the interaction. In the same way, an ‘oppositional reading’ of a text is one which
refuses to accept the implied positioning of the ‘ideal reader’.

As participants in meaning creation through discourse, we can often recognize contradictions between different
orders of discourse and seek to find ways to blend these together – for example, through blending everyday
language with the language of authority in order to make it easier to convey a more sympathetic attitude to an
employee who has stepped out of line. The egalitarian order of everyday discourse built on solidarity is
combined with the managerial discourse built on exercise of authority. The general point is that discourse needs
to be seen as a site of struggle and meanings are never fixed (for more on discoursal forms of struggle, see
Billig et al (1988), where the term ‘ideological dilemmas’ is introduced).

DISCOURSE AS SOCIAL PRACTICE: ideology and hegemony

Ideology is important for Fairclough’s theory because it is the key means through which social relations of
power and domination are sustained. The function of ideologies is to establish, sustain or change power
relations in society. For Fairclough, ideologies are constructions of reality which are built into various
dimensions of the forms and meanings of discursive practices. Through power relations implicit in orders of
discourse, discourse become invested ideologically. Through being ideologically invested, discourse is a mode
of producing, reproducing or transforming social identities, social relations, and systems of knowledge and
belief.

Fairclough (1992) makes three claims about ideology, based in part on the French Marxist philosopher,
Althusser. For Althusser, ideology functions to secure the reproduction of capitalist relations of production by
instilling the necessary skills into the minds of the population – subjection to the ruling ideology.

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1. Ideology has a material basis in the social practices of institutions. As a form of social practice, discourse
practices are material forms of ideology.

2. Ideology ‘interpellates subjects’. It works by constituting people as subjects within the framework of
ideology. Patriarchal ideology interpellates individuals as more powerful men or less powerful women. Racist
ideology interpellates groups as ‘ourselves’ and ‘the Other’ (see Hall 1997 ‘The Spectacle of the Other’).

3. Ideology operates through powerful ‘ideological state apparatuses’. Althusser contrasts what he terms the
repressive agencies of the police, the military, prisons and the courts, with the ideological state apparatuses of
the mass media, education and popular culture. In Fairclough’s theory, all of these give rise to institutional and
societal orders of discourse (the societal order of discourse is a condensation of the institutional orders of
discourse).

The first thing to say is that interpellation results in a type of crude social classification. This will tend to lead to
stereotyping. Hall 1997 explains how stereotyping fixes boundaries, classifies people according to a norm and
constructs the excluded ‘Other’ as in some way deviant.

Secondly, establishing normalcy is done through dominant discourses – discourses which are favoured by
ruling groups in society and which are prominent in configuring orders of discourse. Dominant discourses are
thus a mechanism of social control for the ruling groups and a means for them to exercise leadership in society.

Thirdly, control through dominant discourses can be understood in terms of what the Marxist theorist and
activist Gramsci called ‘hegemony’. Hegemony of a social group means that subordinate groups willingly
assimilate the world-view of the dominant group. It is a form of control through consensus, as contrasted with
control based on coercion (force or threat of force). For Fairclough, hegemony operates through orders of
discourse of society and institutions such as education, media, business, and the particular political ideologies of
the time. He analyzes Thatcher’s political discourse in the 1980’s as discursive rearticulation of the previous
order of discourse of Conservatism, ‘a hegemonic project for the constitution of a new political base and
agenda’. The same can be said for New Labour in the 1990’s, about which Fairclough has also written a book
(1999).

Finally, familiarity with dominant discourses, because they are so omnipresent, can lead to ‘naturalization’ of
certain ways of seeing things. This means that we come to see a certain way of seeing things as common sense.
Once this has been achieved, we no longer question the assumptions on which the argument is based, and the
dominant ideology has become entrenched. This results in the reproduction of knowledge and beliefs, systems
of social relations and the identities of social groups. […]

A summary of Fairclough Discourse and Social Change (1992) with some reference to Fairclough Language and Power (1989, 2000), Fairclough
Media Discourse (1995) and Hall The Spectacle of the Other (1997)

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