Read Online Ideology: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Michael Freeden - Free Book Online
Authors: Michael Freeden
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the discovery of the internal fluidity of ideologies allowed them to be recast as engines of change and renewal, not just as unbending instruments of dominance. That was reinforced by some of the developments to which we now turn.
Chapter 4
The struggle over political language
Language and meaning
Developments in linguistics provided another external source of inspiration for students of ideology. The emphasis on grammar and on semantics (the study of meaning) opened new doors through which students of ideology began to rush in increasing numbers. Grammar was presented as the structural rules that linked words together in a particular sequence. Words, as we know, are not pieced together randomly (as in ‘political all the free government should prisoners’) but only ‘made sense’ in particular arrangements (‘the government should free all political prisoners’).
Similarly ideologies, which were expressed primarily through language, were seen as displaying their own grammatical peculiarities. Moreover, words – and combinations of words – carried specific meaning: their sounds and letters (the signs) indicated something else that was being represented, or signified. The word ‘authority’ might signify a series of acts of deference to a person or institution. But the meanings of words were also interdependent; they were located in a network of relationships with other words and were only intelligible in that context. The word ‘free’ meant something quite different in the sentence ‘The government should free all political prisoners’ and in the sentence ‘Pop over and see me if you have some free time’. Not only did therules of grammar establish that in the first case ‘free’ was a verb and in the second an adjective but, more importantly for our purposes, the relationships between the words in the two sentences established that what was being discussed was (
a
) an act of liberation, and (
b
) the absence of other commitments.
Students of ideology, who discovered rather late in the day that it was profitable to treat ideologies as linguistic and semantic products, turned their new knowledge to good use. The internal complexity of ideologies was perceived more clearly; especially the possibility that ideologies could carry a multiplicity of meanings through a minor tweaking of the words and phrases they utilized. Moreover, liaising with psychological insights, the impact of the unconscious was beginning to be felt. Grammar, after all, existed at an unconscious level for native users of a language. Likewise, ideological assumptions – concerning the meanings of the words and ideas to which we have recourse – could be held unknowingly. This was a major departure in the investigation of political thought. Political philosophers, particularly of the Anglo-American variety, have insisted on the reflective and purposive nature of political theory. Empirical students of ideology, as observed above, assumed it to be a cognitive activity, known to the bearers of an ideology. Unintentional messages had not seemed to be of scholarly significance because they were not subject to the rational control of the users of political language.
The surplus of meaning
The unconscious became an important object of ideological exploration, aided by several developments in post-war continental theorizing. One instance was the impact of the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, whose extensive studies of ideology emphasized its positive as well as its negative sides. Ricoeur singled out one unconscious aspect of ideology that he termed a ‘surplus of meaning’. By that he meant that ideologies (as indeed many forms of human expression) conveyed more information than theirauthors were aware of, or had intended. For example, when Machiavelli famously likened fortune to a woman who, in order to be submissive, had to be beaten and coerced, he intended that as a warning to princes to control the vicissitudes of fortune if
Chapter 4
The struggle over political language
Language and meaning
Developments in linguistics provided another external source of inspiration for students of ideology. The emphasis on grammar and on semantics (the study of meaning) opened new doors through which students of ideology began to rush in increasing numbers. Grammar was presented as the structural rules that linked words together in a particular sequence. Words, as we know, are not pieced together randomly (as in ‘political all the free government should prisoners’) but only ‘made sense’ in particular arrangements (‘the government should free all political prisoners’).
Similarly ideologies, which were expressed primarily through language, were seen as displaying their own grammatical peculiarities. Moreover, words – and combinations of words – carried specific meaning: their sounds and letters (the signs) indicated something else that was being represented, or signified. The word ‘authority’ might signify a series of acts of deference to a person or institution. But the meanings of words were also interdependent; they were located in a network of relationships with other words and were only intelligible in that context. The word ‘free’ meant something quite different in the sentence ‘The government should free all political prisoners’ and in the sentence ‘Pop over and see me if you have some free time’. Not only did therules of grammar establish that in the first case ‘free’ was a verb and in the second an adjective but, more importantly for our purposes, the relationships between the words in the two sentences established that what was being discussed was (
a
) an act of liberation, and (
b
) the absence of other commitments.
Students of ideology, who discovered rather late in the day that it was profitable to treat ideologies as linguistic and semantic products, turned their new knowledge to good use. The internal complexity of ideologies was perceived more clearly; especially the possibility that ideologies could carry a multiplicity of meanings through a minor tweaking of the words and phrases they utilized. Moreover, liaising with psychological insights, the impact of the unconscious was beginning to be felt. Grammar, after all, existed at an unconscious level for native users of a language. Likewise, ideological assumptions – concerning the meanings of the words and ideas to which we have recourse – could be held unknowingly. This was a major departure in the investigation of political thought. Political philosophers, particularly of the Anglo-American variety, have insisted on the reflective and purposive nature of political theory. Empirical students of ideology, as observed above, assumed it to be a cognitive activity, known to the bearers of an ideology. Unintentional messages had not seemed to be of scholarly significance because they were not subject to the rational control of the users of political language.
The surplus of meaning
The unconscious became an important object of ideological exploration, aided by several developments in post-war continental theorizing. One instance was the impact of the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, whose extensive studies of ideology emphasized its positive as well as its negative sides. Ricoeur singled out one unconscious aspect of ideology that he termed a ‘surplus of meaning’. By that he meant that ideologies (as indeed many forms of human expression) conveyed more information than theirauthors were aware of, or had intended. For example, when Machiavelli famously likened fortune to a woman who, in order to be submissive, had to be beaten and coerced, he intended that as a warning to princes to control the vicissitudes of fortune if
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