Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1. Ideology
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
This chapter reviews key notions about pragmatic strategies driven by ideologies, especially those in the political field. The theoretical basis of this thesis is found of the previous studies on ideology and news bias, speech acts, and politeness theory. The organization of this chapter is as follows. The first section introduces the theoretical background of ideology. The second section focuses on speech act theory. The third section reviews politeness theories.
2.1. Ideology
In this section, there are three approaches to the concepts of ideology in different knowledge backgrounds, namely epistemology, sociology, and politics. Among these approaches, this study would specifically focus on the political ideological influence on the use of speech act. Moreover, the linguistic association with political ideology is also introduced
2.1.1. Epistemological Approach
The term ‗ideology‘ is coined by the French philosopher Destutt de Tracy in the end of eighteenth century (Thompson, 1990:29; Roucek, 1944:482) to refer to his project of ‗science of ideas‘ which concerns with the systematic analysis of ideas and sensations. Such ‗science‘ was inherited from the faith of Enlightenment which regarded all knowledge as transformed sensations (Thompson, 1990:30). The epistemologists from the Enlightenment to the French Revolution believed that human ideas were driven from sensations rather than from some innate or transcendental source; these ‗sensations‘ determined its ‗reflections‘ and all ideas thus had their sources from material experience. (Hawkes, 2003:51) In other words, by observing
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the movement by which sensations are transformed into ideas, it is possible to understand the ways in which patterns of ideas come into being. In sum, the epistemological meaning of ideology is to study the origin and boundaries of knowledge, and the basic quest is the possibility and reliability of knowledge.
Nonetheless, this neutral conception of ideology later became a pejorative expression in the early nineteenth century. During the degeneration of Bonaparte, Napoleon had ridiculed ideology as ‗an abstract speculative doctrine which was divorced from the political power‘ and condemned ideology as the obverse of astute statecraft so that to silence his intellectual opponents and excused for the collapse of his regime (Thompson, 1990:31-2). After the collapse of the Napoleonic regime, the term ‗ideology‘ ceased to refer to ‗the science of ideas‘ and began to also refer to the
‗ideas themselves,‘ that is, to ‗a body of ideas which alleged to be erroneous and divorced from the practical realities of political life (Thompson, 1990:32).‘ The opposition between the neutral/positive and the negative meaning becomes the very nature of the concept of ‗ideology.‘ Accordingly, subsequent scholars applied the notion of ideology differently in different fields.
2.1.2. Sociological Approach
When characterizing the content and function of ‗ideology,‘ sociologists emphasize its social meaning rather than the scientific content. Marx and Engels, who took the critical edge popularized by Napoleon‘s scorn of ‗cloudy metaphysics‘
(McLellan, 1995:9; Thompson, 1990: 30-1), pejoratively criticized ‗ideology‘ as ‗a theoretical doctrine and activity which erroneously regards ideas as autonomous and efficacious and which fails to grasp the real conditions and characteristics of social-historical life‘ (Thompson, 1990: 35). Contrary to epistemologists‘ viewpoint, Marx and Engels regarded ideology as abstract and illusory. Especially in the social
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structure, Marx considered that ideology is ‗a system of ideas which expresses the interests of the dominant class but which represents class relations in an illusory form,‘
(Thompson, 1990: 37) and with these ideas, the dominant class therefore falsely legitimates its political power. To Marx, ideology exists for sustaining the existing relations of class domination.
In contrast to Marx‘s negative sense of ideology, Mannheim (1936) examined the concept of ideology in a neutral way. Mannheim categorized two perceptives of ideology: particular conception and total conception of ideology (Thompson, 1990:
48). Particular conception of ideology refers to the ideas and views advanced by the opponents and regard them as misinterpretations of the real nature of the situation;
total conception of ideology refers to a mode of thinking owned by certain social-historical group. Mannheim‘s particular concept of ideology is close to Marx‘s view, while his total concept of ideology is a concept of ‗world-view‘ which shows that ideas do not exist in vacuity but are always to be understood in terms of the relation of the possessor of knowledge to the particular social and historical factors (Roucek, 1944:487). Therefore, in Mannheim‘s terms, ideology must be a ‗sociology of knowledge‘ (Thompson, 1990:51; Eagleton, 1991:109).
In all, the sociological discussion of ideology includes the opposition between the neutral/positive sense and the negative sense. Marx took the negative sense and regarded ideology as an instrument of social reproduction. Whereas, Mannheim neutrally/positively regarded ideology as a non-evaluative conception that explains the course of the social-historical world.
2.1.3. Political Approach
In social studies, political ideology, in its simplest formulation, is a set of ideas that focuses on the political regime and its institutions (Sargent, 2006:3; Macridis &
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Hulliung, 1996:2), and that about people and their position and role in it (Macridis &
Hulliung, 1996). Discussions of political ideology cover topics from human, the origin of government/state, to the structural characteristics of government/state.
Generally, the building block of political ideology are, (1) a set of comprehensive explanations and principles dealing with the world, (2) a program of political and social action in general terms, and (3) an idea of struggle to carry out the program;
and finally, adherents who commit to the ideology. (Leach, 1993:5) Based on the variation of the composition, contemporary political ideologies can be outlined as the political spectrum in Figure 1.
Left Center Right
6 5 4 3 2 1
Anarchism Communism Democratic Socialism
Liberalism Conservatism Fascism
Figure 1. Political spectrum model (Leach, 1993:13)
According to the current situation in most countries, various political ideologies may coexist in the same national culture. Nonetheless, it is a compromise made by political parties; in fact, the competition of different ideologies never disappears.
Initially, a political ideology may have been imposed by force by a dominant group;
then new ideology slowly becomes acceptable after generations and forms the contending situation of political ideologies. However, according to Leach (1993:5), to avoid possible polarization between competing ideologies, a dominant ideology tends to be held by the majority of the citizens. Even so, the coexisting political groups in the society still plant the seed of change in the seemingly stable situation, as implied in the political spectrum model in Figure 1.
In all, this thesis inherits Mannheim‘s total conception of ideology and has narrowed it down to the political field. In this study, The representative political
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ideology in Taiwan‘s political spectrum—the blue-green opposition (藍綠對立)—is taken as the social factor. It is hypothesized in this study that speakers favoring different political groups would perform their speech acts differently.
2.1.4. Linguistic Association with Political Ideology
Discussions about the ideological representation in language usage can be traced back to Ferdinand Saussure‘s distinction between language and speech a century ago.
By Saussure, language is a formal structure which underlies all speech, and the actual discourse of individuals can be viewed as a screen hiding the underlying ideological structure of their words and actions. (McLellan,1995:59; Hawkes, 2003:142) Such structuralism subdivides utterances into their surface structure and underlying structures. Sharing the similar concept, Barthes (1973) expresses this discrepancy as a distinction between what a statement denotes and what it connotes. Likewise, van Dijk (2007) specifically points out that linguistic representations are not ideologically biased; it is the use of them that contains the ideological meanings. In other words, in analyzing the ideological content in language, it is not the linguistic features that are needed to be seized on, but the intended pragmatic function. The theory of speech act offers a linguistic methodology to the ideology issue. Detailed introduction of speech act is represented in the next section.