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Today’s program:. Before we enter the realm of ideologies, let’s go back to unit 5 and take a look at how discourse can construct realities (strategies) First part of slides ( 3 -9)
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Today’s program: • Before we enter the realm of ideologies, let’s go back to unit 5 and take a look at how discourse can construct realities (strategies) • First part of slides ( 3 -9) • Explore what ideologies are and how this relates to our identity and how this affects the way me may sense (meaning making process) of our world and the role discourse plays in all this
Social constructed? (unit 5) • There is a relation between discourses and social activities • Understanding is ultimately based on doing, our understandings derive from our doings. But discourses transform these practices in ways which safeguard the interests at stake in a given social context. • DiscourseDoing: What? Why? Plus ideas and attributes • Actual example: Status Aparte: LGO? UPG?influences the social act voting
Discourse Doing: What? Why? Plus ideas and attributes(unit 5) Ideas and attributes: • Evaluations: a value • Purposes • Legitimating: reasons why particular things should be done in particular ways, by particular people, etc. • (advertising, political discourse the art of persuasion )
The Anatomy of Discourse (1) (unit 5) • Actions: the things people do, the activities that make up the social practice and their chronological order • Manner: the way in which (some of or all of) the actions are performed. (e.g. slowly, energetically, graciously, based on anger) • Actors: people (also animals) involved in the practice, and then different roles in which they are involved (for instance active and passive roles) • Presentation: is the way in which actors are dressed and groomed. All social pratices have their rules of presentation, although they differ in kind and degree of strictness
The Anatomy of Discourse (2) (unit 5) • Resources: the tools and materials needed to enact a social practice • Times: Inevitably social practices are timed, they take place at certain times, and they last for certain amounts of time • Spaces: the spaces where the social action takes place, including the way they should be arranged to make the practice possible • In reality all these elements must be part of the way a social practice is actually enacted. But texts/discourses may include only some of them, and so do the discourses on which these texts draw their content. Knowledge is selectiveand what it selects depends on the interests and purposes of the sender(s) (institutions) that have foster the knowledge • Being critical literate is being aware of this fact!
Social practices represented in Written texts/media (unit 5) • Written texts and media include only some elements of the social practice, the actions and the medium through which they are realized. • Not represented are the writer and the reader, and the circumstances of writing and reading –time, place and grooming etc-
How is reality changed into discourse? (unit 5) (p.s this slide is very important) 4 basic types of transformation of reality: • Exclusion: discourses can exclude elements of social practice • Rearrangement: Discourses can rearrange the elements of social practices, for instance when it ‘detemporalizes’ elements which in reality have a specific order, or when it imposes a specific order on actions which in reality do not need to take place in any specific order • Addition: discourses can add elements to the representation (purposes, evaluations, legitimations) • Substitution: discourse substitutes concepts with other concepts • Being critical literacy is being aware of the strategies that are applied in order to construct reality
Reflect on where we are now • Language mediates experience (social reality) • People use language to mediate experience (social reality) (communication is intentional, symbolic and contextual) • Discourse (knowledge of some aspect of reality) as a means to construct social realities • Social reality and discourse (anatomy of discourse) • Strategies for construction of reality
Discourse, ideologies and the meaning making process: • Discourse Doing: What? Why? (mediation of social practice) Plus ideas and attributes • Plus ideas and attributes • Plus ideas and attributes • Plus ideas and attributes • Ideologies influence the meaning making process • Both on the coding (intention of mediation strategy for constructing social realities) • And the decoding level(the ability to interpret the message) the workings of ideologies
Discourse: Language, constructed knowledges (Realities) and Social Practice
Ideologies and Discourse • To explore the concept of ideology • How ideology relates to cognition, society and discourse • Explore the structure of ideologies • Explore the relationship between ideologies and social groups • We shall pay special attention to the discursive dimensions of ideologies. We want to know how ideologies may be expressed (or concealed!) in discourse; • And how ideologies may be reproduced in society
Your meaning of ‘Ideology’ • How would do you define ‘ideology’? • Which associations do you get, when you hear the concept ‘ideology’ ?
2 Videos • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76frHHpoNFs&feature=related • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI0itS3gQFU
Cognition, Society & Discourse • Ideology & cognition : • in terms of the social cognitions that are shared by the members of a group • Ideology & society • in terms of the social dimension explaining what kind of groups, relations between groups and institutions are involved in the development and reproduction of ideologies • Ideology & discourse • In terms of discourse explaining how ideologies influences our daily texts and talk and in terms of how we understand ideological discourse and how discourse is involved in the reproduction of ideology in society
What are Ideologies? (1) • The concept of Ideology is a vague and one of the most contested conceptsin the social sciences. • Intuitively we associate Ideology with systems of ideas, especially the social, political or religious ideas shared by a social group or movement. • E.g. of wide spread ideologies: Communism, ant-communism, socialism and liberalism, racism, anti-racisim, pacifism, militarism • Group members who share such ideologies stand for a number of very general ideas that are at the basis of their more specific believes about the world, guide their interpretation of events, and monitor their social practices
What are Ideologies? (2) • We’ll use the term in psychology that describes ‘thoughts’ of any kind: BELIEVES • General working definition: Ideologies are the fundamental beliefs of a group and its members
Negative connotation of the concept:‘false consciousness’ or ‘misguided believes’ (1) • Marxism Approach(Marx & Engels): Ideologies as ‘false consciousness’ or ‘misguided believes: • Ideologies are forms of ‘false consciousness’, meaning: popular but misguided beliefs inculcated by the ‘ruling’ class in order to ‘legitimate’ the ‘status quo’ and to conceal the real socioeconomic conditions of workers • As systems of self-serving ideas of dominant groups • This is a negative concept of ideology that is prevalent in social sciences (implying a negative connotation to the concept), where it was traditionally being used in opposition to true scientific knowlegde
Negative connotation of the concept:‘false consciousness’ or ‘misguided believes’ (2) • This negative notion of ‘ideology’ has also become central element in the commonsense and political uses of the term ‘a system of false, misguided and misleading believes’ • For instance, in the ideology of anti-communism that for decades dominated (still does) politics and even scholarship in much of the Western World (cold war). Ideology was then associated with communism • Function of Ideologies in this negative approach of the concept: Legitimization of dominance • Positive ideologies: systems that sustain and legitimatize opposition and resistance against domination and social inequality ‘UTOPIAS’ (K.Mannheim). E.g. feminism, anti-rascism
Consequence of negative notion of the concept Ideology: • This negative use of the concept Ideology presupposes the following polarization between US and THEM: • Implying a social polarization between in-group (US) and out-group (THEM) • So in the case of Communism and Anti-Communism, from the perspective of the anti-comm: • “ WE (defenders of freedom) have true knowledges, • THEY (the communists) have ideologies.” WE have true knowledge THEY have Ideologies
A similar contemporary polarization is this one: science (true knowledge: progression) vs. religion (based on myths, conservative). This of course from the point of view of science What would be the point of view of religion? What does religion think of science?
Approaching Ideology as a general notion: • Ideologies don’t need to be negative (existence of Utopias), they don’t need to be about dominance. (Non-dominant can also be negative, e.g. religious sects or right wing extremists) • A general theory of ideology allows a broader and more flexible application of the concept. • Of course, this doesn’t exclude taking a critical stance when studying ideologies (system of believes of group members), (as you will see. That is the purpose of this course)
Ideology as the basis of social practices • As ‘systems of believes of social groups’ (and movements) ideologies make sense in order to understand the world (from the point of view of the group). • Ideologies help understand the social practices of group members • E.g. sexist and racist ideologies are at the basis of discrimination (=social practice) • E.g. pacifist ideologies may be used against nuclear weapons • E.g. ecological ideologies will guide against pollution • Often Ideologies emerge from group conflict and struggle: pitching US against THEM
One crucial social practice: ‘Language use’ • One of the crucial social practices influenced by ideologies are language use and discourse. • Which in turn, influence how we acquire, learn or change ideologies: • Much of our discourse, especially when we speak as members of groups, expresses ideologically based opinions • We Learn ideological ideas: by reading and listening to other group members (beginning with parents and peers), watching TV, reading text books at school, advertising, the newspaper, novels, participating in everyday conversations with friends, family and colleagues (and so on…) • Some discourse genre have the specific purpose of ‘teaching’ ideologies to group members of newcomers: • E.g. catechism, party rallies, indoctrination and political propaganda
Let’s compare some ideological icons http://www.kontraband.com/pics/19571/Political-Pictographs/ Capitalism Altruism Ant-materialism
Types of memories and types of believes • Ideologies often have an evaluative dimension. • This can affect our knowledge, attitudes and believes • Cognitive science: distinction between LTM and STM • Ideological believes are located in the LONG TERM Memory (LTM) • Social Memory: shared believes and knowledges (LTM) • Common Ground knowledge (LTM) • Episodic memory: everyday activities (STM) Short term memory. Is subjective, autobiographical, unique • Ideologies are social shared by a group (Social Memory) and influence our daily activities (Episodic Memory)
The organization of Ideologies • Not organized in the mind in arbitrary ways. The mind and its memory is organized in categories. Ideologies have a ‘system’ (organization) of believes. • This system has an ‘schema-like’ nature: it consists of a number of conventional categories that allows social actors to rapidly understand, build, rejector modifyan ideology • The categories that define the ideological schema derive from the basic properties of social groups • If ideologies underlie the social beliefs of a group, then the identity and identification of group member must follow a more or less fixed pattern of basic categories, together with practical rules of application
Categories of the Ideological Schema: • Membership criteria: Who does (not) belong? • Typical activities: What do we do? • Overall aims: What do we want? • Norms and Values: What is good or bad for us? • Position: What are the relationships with other? • Resources: Who has access to our group resources? (this schematic structure is purely theoretical!)
Ideology as a form of Self (and Other) Representation: • A Schema of six categories which categorizes not only collective and individual action, but also organizes the ideologies of our mind. These categories define what it means to be a member of a group and to jointly feel as ‘one’ group A group self-schema • Ideology= A self (and other) representation: Us and Them + collective believes and hence criteria for identification for group members • Ideology=One of the basic forms of social cognition that at the same time define the identity of a group
From Ideology to Discourse and vice versa • A specific property of forms of social cognition is that they are by definition generaland abstract. They need to be, because they should apply in a large variety of everyday situations. • E.g. Racist ideologies embody how WE think about THEM in general, and individual group members (depending on the social context) ‘apply’ these general opinions in concrete situations, and hence in concrete discourse • There may be a wide gap between the abstract, general ideologies on the one hand, and how people produce and understand discourse or engage in other social practices on the other hand. • Exception: discourses that are explicitly ideological, such as to those that teach or explain ideologies to new group members or defend ideologies against attacks from outsiders.
‘Intermediary’ (bridging) representations between ideologies and discourse • In order to relate ideology to discourse, group attitudes and group knowledge (=other forms of social cognitions) function as intermediaries. • But even these still are general and abstract; hence we need a more specific interface between social cognition and discourse!!! • Let’s take a look at a schema representing our discussion so far: (next sheet)
This is way complex, and goes beyond this course, but put in a too simplistic schema: Interaction / Discourse Social memory Group Knowledge Group Attitudes Group Ideology (different groups) Socio-Cultural Knowledge (Common Ground)
The role of mental models… • Distinction between social memory and personal (autobiographical) memory (episodic memory) • Episodic memory are made of mental representations of the episodes that give rise to our daily lives (from the moment we wake up until the moment we fall as sleep= mental models • We have mental models of daily events we participate in, witness (in reality or tv), or read about. Models of events, actions, situations, as well as their participants, of which the autobiographical models of events we participate in ourselves are a specific case mental models are personal and subjective
Mental Models • The way we perceive, understand or interpret our daily reality (represent) takes place via construction and reconstruction (updating/modification) of our mental models. • These representations are influenced by previous experiences (old models) and these may bias my current perceptions and interpretations. • Mental models also embody opinions about events we read or hear about. • The structure of mental models : schema of events (social practices) consisting of actions, participants (things, people), setting (time, place) • An important property of Mental models is that they feature instantiations (specifications, examples) of more general and abstract believes (including social cognitions) • Mental models are ideologically based, and this influences our perception of the world (the meaning making process)
Mental models & Ideological conflict • Ideological conflict: at the level of personal experiences, people may be confronted with ideological conflict and confusion. This because we identify with several social groups at the same time, meaning a conflict of different ideological positions • E.g. you may be a woman, at the same time a mother, a professional writer, a socialist, a feminist, a atheist and so on, and the representations of your personal life experiences may require opinions that are not always compatible with these various identities. • Depending on the specific social situation (context) you then find yourself in will influence your choice in resolving the ideological conflicts
Discourses are like Icebergs Mental model construction, updating in order to understand and interpret. ‘Negotiation of mental models’ Discourses Shared social believes; Social memory
How are ideologies distributed: discourse (constantly repeated)
Important question: How do speakers know what information to include in a discourse, and what information to leave implicit? • Speakers have believes about the believes of recipients; • a) socially shared beliefs that belong to the Common Ground • b) knowing people personally and intimately implies that we know more of the specific (model) information they have. • c) socially shared but specific information about events that are distributed (and presupposed) by the media, knowledge we call ‘historical’ • E.g. a newspaper article don’t need to explain to its readers what World War 2 or the Holocaust are. • So, as a speaker, you need to know social shared information and what does the speaker does not yet know in order to compose your expression
Ideologies in society • Ideologies are essentially social. • Cognitive view: social memory, social cognition shared social representations of a group • Ideologies are social learned and distributed and collectively represented by a group. • Ideologies are in this sense at the same time cognitive and social • People bring there ideologies and these manifest themselves in social practices of everyday life (a crucial form is discourse): in text and talk, paraverbal activities that accompany talk (gestures, facial expressions etc).
The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice. Who are YOU? said the caterpillar...This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, `I--I hardly know, sir, just at present-- at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.'
Social basis of Ideologies • Social practices that define people’s life: in the family, at work, during study, at leisure. E.g. discrimination at work, materialistic values in the family, sexism between spouses, philanthropic donations, being hostile to other people from a political party during campaign times. • There is a close relationship between ideology, social identity, group self-schemata, social practices. • And the social construction of the group suggests that groupness may be inherently linked to having an ideology
Assignment: What is the ideological message behind this discourse utterances?
