Language and Ideology - Essay Example

Language and Ideology In the twentieth century, previous assumptions about the possibility of a truthful replication of reality have been challenged by a number of theories which point to the borders and margins of representation, such as Marxism and Feminism, and to the inherent difficulties within language itself, now questioned as a source of stable and transparent expression. Through the work of Saussure, Levi-Strauss, Barthes, Marx and Engels, Derrida, and Lacan, among many other theorists and critics, the relationship between language and ideology has been exposed as a indivisible, reciprocal exchange in which language underlies and sustains ideology, and vice versa. That is, language does not exist without ideology and ideology does not exist without language. Due to its artificiality, language and its application through narrative is vulnerable to manipulation that functions as a justification for the interests of certain power relations within society. Since both language and ideology are culturally embedded, all forms of linguistic representation must be understood as constructed and mediated. The aim of the critic becomes the deconstruction of the form and content of social expression that is constituted through the dynamic inter-relation of language and the ideas that it supports and perpetuates. To understand its relation to ideology, we must first examine how language is formulated from a material perspective. According to Ferdinand de Saussure's seminal analysis of the structure of words and their associated meanings, the former is never a transparent indicator of the latter. In his Course in General Linguistics, Saussure maintained that language should be divided into two components: "langue," referring to the entire body of a language, and "parole," referring to a specific utterance or individual act of speech within a language. The latter can only be comprehended within the larger system of the former. That is, the meaning of words or "signs" is derived from their relation to one another within a cumulative structure or system of signification.1 To illustrate this principle, Saussure drew a clearly discernable distinction between the "signifier," or word, and the "signified," or that to which the word refers or claims to represent. For example, the word "tree" is only indicative of the external, material object of a tree insofar as we believe and regard it to be. The word "tree" can just as easily be applied to other external, material objects. In this way, the formation of words and their meanings is an entirely artificial, constructed, and enclosed relation.2 Saussure's analysis of language instigated a radical rethinking of our understanding of subjectivity, culture, and power. Since the linguistic system of "signs," or "semiotics," is a product not of a natural relation between signifier and signified but of the human mind generating and organizing signs into meaning, Saussure concluded that the methodical study of languages would lead to new discoveries about human nature on both the individual and the collective level. Amongst the most influential thinkers to further this conclusion was the structural anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss. In his 1958 work, Structural Anthropology, Levi-Strauss introduced structuralism as "the systematic attempt to uncover deep universal mental structures as these manifest themselves in kinship and larger social structures, in literature, philosophy and mathematics, and in the unconscious psychological patterns that motivate human behaviour"3 This project is an extension of Saussure's proposed science of semiology. As Saussure wrote, "Linguistics is only one branch of this general science. The laws which semiology will discover will be laws applicable to linguistics, and the linguistics will thus be assigned to a clearly defined place in the field of human knowledge."4 Applying Saussure's understanding of linguistic systems to other domains of social inquiry, such as methods of economic exchange, kinship, food, and myths, Levi-Strauss viewed human society "as a combination of elements, never intelligible in itself, but only when its internal arrangement can be seen as one amongst others"5 From this presupposition, Levi-Strauss sought to understand a culture's mythology, or ideology, not only in terms of the content of the particular myth or idea itself but on the mind that produces, embraces, and transmits these myths and ideas. Claiming that the mind is subject to certain "laws of transformation" that limit the possible range of mythical beliefs, myths, and variations of myths, Levi-Strauss maintained that through scientific study a predictable and innate grammar of "deep structures" could be discerned.6 Among these "deep structures" and one of Levi-Strauss' central arguments is the concept of the "law of opposition" where two things or properties are set in opposition to one another as binary operators. Levi-Strauss argues that it is by the formation of such oppositions that initial logical structures begin to form within the human mind.7 It is important to note, however, that these oppositions should not be understood solely as contradictions in the strict logical sense: "In abstract these relations can be reduced to one of binary opposition, which term tends to be used in two somewhat different senses. The first sense is one precisely analogous to that in which a logician ascribes truth values to a propositional variable 'p', such that it is either true or false, and conversely such that 'not p'is either true or false. This sense is further exemplified in the logical calculus of classes when the universe of discourse is said to be divided into the class and its complement ('not '), two mutually exclusive and exhaustive categories. In this sense, a structural anthropologist might divide the members of a group into the categories of 'married' and 'not married', which would constitute a binary opposition. The second sense in which the concept is used is far less rigorous in terms of formal logic, and includes the bulk of the binary oppositions found in structural analyses.for example, fire/water, Sun/Moon, ant-eater/jaguar. These are not logically pairs of complementary, exhaustive, mutually exclusive categories in the sense in which '', '' is, but are shown to by the author to be perceived as such, within specific contexts, by the groups who employ the terms in their myths."8 According to Levi-Strauss, it is the "law of opposition" that is responsible for a myriad of aspects of human understanding, allowing for the formation of structures, the perception of things and properties as distinct, the possibility of naming and classifying, and the ability to make reasonable predictions and problem solve.9 In sum, opposition is regarded as a crucial means of how the mind relates mental content in structural form. Roland Barthes builds upon the work of both Saussure and Levi-Strauss, claiming that meaning is not arbitrarily or universally constructed but subject to a socially determined setting. This position marks a shift in our understanding of language and ideology. Whereas Saussure and Levi-Strauss focused on the self-reflexive or enclosed aspects of linguistic and mythological systems, Barthes maintained that meaning or "signified" of a linguistic "sign" is not added arbitrarily or according to an inherent structure within the human mind, such as the binary opposition. In his theoretical essay, "Myth Today," Barthes maintains that myth cannot be understood in terms of its content but rather as "a mode of signification, a form" that is embedded within a particular historical moment.10 Barthes goes on to redefine the "signified" aspect of the sign by adding a further layer of meaning, or culturally determined subtext, that can be isolated and linked to particular social interests, such as a ruling elite or corporate media. According to Barthes, "in myth there are two semiological systems, one of which is staggered in relation to the other: a linguistic system, the language (or the modes of representation which are assimilated to it), which I shall call the language-object, because it is the language which myth gets hold of in order to build its own system; and myth itself, which I shall call the metalanguage, because it is a second language, in which one speaks about the first."11 To illustrate the dynamic between the "language-object" and "metalanguage" Barthes deconstructs a photograph of a black man "in a French uniform" saluting the French flag "with his eyes uplifted" on the cover of a periodical entitled "Paris-Match." Barthes decodes the layers of meaning that this picture displays, with the physical image on the paper acting as the original "signifier" while its associated meaning, the "signified," is the literal presentation of patriotism through the figure of a loyal citizen expressing deference and admiration for their country. The additional layer of signification that Barthes pinpoints is the cumulative effect of both "signifier" and "signified" that creates a "mythological" subtext that works to reinforce and legitimate French imperialism by implying that Frances non-white "citizens" in the colonial African territories are satisfied with their subservient role relative to their ruling French oppressors. In this way, "the purposeful mixture of Frenchness and militariness" of the "signified" becomes a "signifier" in a "second-order semiological system" that comprises the glorifying mythology that functions as a justification for imperial aggression.12 This interpretive position is similar to that found in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels The German Ideology. In the section entitled "Ruling Class and Ruling Ideas" Marx and Engels state that "the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas."13 As Marx and Engels explain, the ruling elite holds a vested interest in developing and perpetuating a certain mythology or "consciousness" in order to justify inequitable distributions of wealth and power: "For each new class which puts itself in the place of one ruling before it, is compelled, merely in order to carry through its aim, to represent its interest as the common interest of all the members of society, that is, expressed in ideal form: it has to give its ideas the form of universality, and represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones."14 From this perspective, we can critique the assumption made by Saussure and Levi-Strauss that there are certain universal structures held in common across multiple societies. Perhaps the most severe example of such a critique of this position is found in the work of Jacque Derrida. In The Savage Mind, Levi-Strauss states, "Science as a whole is based on the distinction between the contingent and the necessary, this being also what distinguishes event and structure."15 In response to this claim, Derrida begins his essay entitled "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" with the following observation: "Perhaps something has occurred in the history of the concept of structure that could be called an "event," if this loaded word did not entail a meaning which is precisely the function of structural-or structuralist-through to reduce or suspect."16 Derrida thus begins by drawing attention to the popular rise of structuralism in the 1960s as a historically contingent event in the history of the concept of structure itself. Moreover, the word "structure" itself belongs to an older "episteme-that is to say, as old as western science and western philosophy" that effectively undermines the historical "rupture" or break from classical thinking in the human sciences that structuralism purports to represent.17 As Derrida explains, all notions of structure have a centre, or "point of presence," from where the structure originates. Building on Saussure's explication of language as an unnatural system of arbitrary signification, Derrida claims that there is a primary artificial concept that holds this structure together, being the notion of a "centre." While upholding the overall structure, this centre also limits the movements of the structure's elements, ultimately dictating the epistemological possibilities that can be built through such elements. He argues, "[] the whole history of the concept structure, before the rupture I spoke of, must be thought of as a series of substitutions of center for center, as a linked chain of determinations of the center. Successively, and in a regulated fashion, the center receives different forms or names. The history of metaphysics, like the history of the West, is the history of these metaphors and metonymies. Its matrix [] is the determination of being as presence in all the senses of this word. It would be possible to show that all the names related to fundamentals, to principles, or to the I center have always designated the constant of a presence-eidos, arche, telos, energeia, ousia (essence, existence, substance, subject) aletheia [truth], transcendentality, consciousness, or conscience, God, man, and so forth."18 The continuous substitutions suggests that the "central presence was never itself" but "has always already been transported outside itself in its surrogate." Ultimately, the centre is not the centre; rather, it is outside the structure in the form of a "transcendental signified" that "is never absolutely present outside a system of difference. The absence of the transcendental signified extends the domain and the interplay of signification ad infinitum." Here, the transcendental signified refers to the notion that there is an ultimate source of meaning or truth accessible to us. That is, an authoritative centre that holds the system of signification in place.19 Since there is no centre, Derrida argues that infinite play, in opposition to the illusory stability of structure, should constitute meaning. To accomplish this Derrida proposes the textual strategy of deconstruction through which Western philosophy could be made aware of itself as structured and, in doing so, seek the "destabilization of philosophical positions and hierarchies in a hope of creating a new perspective."20 The implication of this strategy is the resistance of pre-determined mythologies through which the subject can be manipulated and controlled. Rather, the subject is left unhindered with the ability to construct her or his own "truth." What is the consequence of this apparent freedom and power To what degree are individuals capable of ridding themselves of external ideological domination In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels demonstrated that one's ideology was intricately connected to the attitude of the privileged class toward the productive relationship of other individuals. Ideology was thus defined as the ruling ideas of the "ruling class."21 Louis Althusser expanded this viewpoint to include the unconscious and conscious ways that individuals interact with one another. Althusser comments, "all ideology represents in its necessarily imaginary distortion not the existing relations of production but above all the imaginary relationship of individuals to the relations of production and the relations that derive from them."22 However, in the late twentieth century the "imaginary" aspect of ideology to which Althusser alludes in the form of language, itself as the primary tool for communication, increasingly became the focal point for discussions on ideology. Many other thinkers, such as Jacques Lacan, avoided understanding ideology strictly in socioeconomic terms of class struggle, and have pointed out how speaking individuals are complicit in ideological communication by speaking from within the system that they wish to critique. In other words, one cannot escape ideology, and in communication, one engages in ideological expression. In his seminal essay, "The Mirror Stage," Lacan proposes that at an early point in our lives, human individuals pass from a stage of wholeness with a maternal figure to a stage of separation. The separation or absence delivers the individual into a symbolic stage, where language becomes the substitute through which the child may express its solitary condition by constructing a unified notion of its own individual identity. From this perspective, subjectivity is an effect of language. Without the symbolic structure of differentiated signifiers, an individual identity would be virtually impossible. The crucial point for Lacan was that this mirroring identification of "that is me," as an objective or concrete false self, is held within the symbolic framework of language, history, and society, which creates the speaking, named subject.23 Ideology is thus intricately connected with subjectivity. That is, it is intertwined not only with external power relations but also within the linguistic and epistemological framework through which people interact with both each other and with themselves. As Levi-Strauss and Barthes have demonstrated, human beings construct both their individual and collective identities according to certain belief systems, or mythologies. From this perspective, ideology is created when the sign of language is projected onto external reality. That is, when reality is constrained to fit within an arbitrary valuation so that the world is interpreted as we are socially conditioned to want it to be. As Lacan notes, ideology is as much internally produced by the symbolically constructed individual subject as it is imposed from external forces such as political and economic power relations. In this sense, it is the individual who subjects herself or himself to social control. As Derrida proposes, one way to overcome this subjection is by continuously disrupting the apparent "centre" of interpretive value so that a multiplicity of meanings and perspective can be discovered. In sum, the relationship between language and ideology is one of constant tension and conflict as linguistic forms and their mythological counterparts are intertwined in a manner that is mutually constitutive. Deciphering ideology thus becomes a nearly endless, continuously shifting task. Bibliography Althusser, Louis. "Ideology and Ideological States Apparatuses (1970)" in A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader. Ed. by Antony Easthope and Kate McGowan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), pp. 42-50 Barthes, Roland. "Myth Today" in Mythologies. Transl. by Annette Lavers (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972), pp. 109-59. Derrida, Jacques. "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" in Writing and Difference. Transl. by Alan Bass (London: Routledge, 1978), pp. 278-94. Glucksmann, Miriam. "The Structuralism of Levi-Strauss and Althusser" in Approaches to Sociology: An Introduction to Major Trends in British Sociology. Ed. by John Rex (London: Routledge, 1974), pp. 230-45. Kurzweil, Edith. The Age of Structuralism: Levi-Strauss to Foucault (New York: Columbia University Press 1980). Lane, M. Introduction to Structuralism (New York: Basic Books, Inc: 1970). Levi-Strauss, Claude. The Savage Mind. (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1972). Lacan, Jacques. "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function, as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Exerience" in Ecrits: A Selection. Transl. by Bruce Fink (United States: W.W. Nortion & Company, Ltd., 2004), pp. 3-10. Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels. "Ruling Class and Ruling Ideas" in Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader. Ed. by John Storey (London: Pearson, 2008), pp. 191-3. Reynolds, Jack and Jonathan Roffe. "An Invitation to Philosophy" in Understanding Derrida. Ed. by Jack Reynolds and Jonathan Roffe (London: Continuum, 2004), pp. 1-4. Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course in General Linguistics (United States: Open Court Publishing Company, 2006). Read More