Language And Ideology

The term ‘ideology’ was first developed in the 18th century by the French philosopher Destutt de Tracy and has become appealing in various fields of research including psychology, sociology, linguistics, politics and so on. There have been multiple definitions of ideology so far. In 1991, Eagleton listed 6 different definitions of the term at that time. These first two definitions tried to connect the terms with the ideas and beliefs of a social group. The third and the fourth tied the ideology with social powers and the imposing of one group’s power on other groups. The last two definitions stated that the ideology signifies the false and deceptive beliefs which arise from the material structure of the society and are beneficial for the ruling

Social and linguistic researchers believe that there is a connection between language and ideology. Fowler and Kress (1979) asserted that every single text includes assessment of a particular matter which implies a particular ideology. In 1982, Hall continued to claim the interrelation of language and ideologies and added that language should be taken into account when studying ideology. Fairclough (1995: 71-72) also emphasized the relationship between these two elements. However, compared to the previous statements, he digged further into linguistic analysis and discovered that ideologies can be involved at different levels in language; they are not only superficial at the text level but also implied at the structure level. As a result, it is not possible to “read off” ideologies from texts. Ideologies conveyed in texts should be analysed in relation to its

As newspaper is also one of the most common ways through which people receive new information everyday, it is an important source for transmitting significant ideologies. (Fowler, 1991:121). In fact, events and ideas are not communicated neutrally. Affairs are reported in a variety of ways in news and these ways are not accidental; they are chosen on purpose with certain ideological implications. Fowler (1991:25) and van Dijk (1997) both agreed that newspaper, as other types of media and discourse, is a constructive practice. Van Dijk emphasized that the implied ideologies and opinions of newspaper are not personal, but social, institutional or political. It is frequent that information is transmitted through some medium with its own structural features is to embed the news in social values and to build up a potential perspective on the target events. (Fowler, 1991: 25) showed that the guiding function of news in the perception of ideologies is presented through language use. Ideologies in newspaper are manifested in linguistic expressions such as word choice, syntactic option and so