Name : Zahid Ali Roll No: 17035

Summary of language Power and Ideology

The concepts of ideology and power take up a vital place in the fields of critical studies of
language. Ideologies are closely linked to power and language and language is the commonest
form of social behavior. Differences in society are created and legitimized by the use of
different forms of language. It is clear after Gramsci (1946) and Althusser (1971) that the social
institutions like family, school, religion, market and so on, have their own means of constructing
meanings to their specific utterances.

The word ideology was first coined by Destutt in the 1970s to describe ‘science of ideas’ as
opposed to metaphysics. He thought that ideology as a discipline help people to recognize their
biases and hatred. For Bourdieu Ideology is a concept that has been used, over used and
abused that it does not work anymore. Different ideas regarding Ideology were presented by
different people like Kavanagh, Kress and Eagleton (1991) but unlike Karl Marx, for whom
ideology is a misleading system of ideas, for Althusser ideology is ‘a practice, all pervasive and
generative in varying degrees in all the social activity’.

Althusser says that the state maintains the status quo of its apparent asymmetrical power
relations with two kinds of apparatuses or channels. Those are Repressive state apparatuses
(RSAs) and Ideological state apparatuses (ISAs). ISAs are disciplines of civil society like political
parties, classrooms, textbooks, media, market, religion, family, clubs and cultural artifacts
which support some ideas, behavior, beliefs and attitudes that are concerned to the aim of the
state and the political status quo.

Althusser (1971) demonstrates that ideology exists by virtue of the constituting category of the
‘subject’. He exerts that all ideology works through the category of the subject. Williamson
pointed out that for a sign to have meaning, an interpreter is required. The sign should be
accessible for an understanding through a system of belief that shows a person’s common
awareness. Subject is someone on whom any test is being done.

Interpellation means addressing or hailing someone. Ideological subjects are created by the act
of interpellation. Althusser uses an analogy of police officer hailing a person: ‘Hey You there’,
the person turns around in response recognizing that he is being called, has being the subject of
the police discourse.

Power is a concept used for the analysis of human behavior including communicative behavior.
Power is taken as a capacity some individuals or groups to have effect the behavior of others
for intended goals. For Foucault, power is neither limitation of freedom nor a control that can
be stored nor a system of domination practice by an individual or a group over another
individual or a group. It is neither top down nor bottom up nor univocal rather power is
multidimensional and multivocal positive instance.

Language, as seen from all the above discussion is an instrument for solidifying and controlling
ideas and connections in the area of control. In this way belief systems are spread by producing
solid people as ideological subjects by method of interpellation.