11. Rhetoric and Ideology
What is Ideology? Isn't it Bad?
Maybe second only to rhetoric, ideology is a term that seems to have one meaning in common usage and another for people who study and analyze rhetoric.
In everyday uses of the term, ideology is often used as a shorthand for “prefabricated political agenda,” “hyperpartisan point of view,” “excuse for oppressive domination,” or something like “blinders that prevent you from seeing the truth.” People will often claim that they have the facts, but their adversaries have only ideology. (Notice how “ideology” seems only to be something one’s opponent is accused of being influenced by!).
But, as we did with the term rhetoric, we are going to take a more specialized approach to the term ideology because we are interested in sharpening our ability to notice and make sense of communicative choices.
A More Specialized Definition of Ideology from Linda Berger
Ideology has many definitions, most of which overlap in terms of ideas, but might diverge in terms of the words chosen to express those ideas. Various fields have their own specialized definitions of ideology, but we will explore some that are most applicable to our purposes as rhetorical analysts.
In rhetorical studies, we conceptualize and define ideology as the commitments that unite and divide particular groups on the basis of powerful systems of beliefs, ideals, and values.
Members of certain groups share these patterns or systems. Ideology is a group, shared point of view. There is no such thing as a one-person ideology. Groups create, use, and maintain ideologies “to understand the world” and form commitments to particular values.
As Berger explains (relying on others she cites), ideology has three major functions within groups:
The “integrating” function. That is, if members of a group have the same commitments and values, they tend to invest the same sets of ideas, symbols, and worldviews with a lot of meaning and evaluative power (e.g. good/bad, safe/risky, us/them, etc.). Sharing those commitments and values helps individuals and groups to craft their identities (“what we stand for”) and work together.
The “legitimizing” function. That is, “by filling in gaps in our reasoning with the glue provided by shared networks” of beliefs and values, ideologies might “make the current state of things seem natural and inevitable.”
The “distorting” function. (See Note) We are all familiar with the phenomenon we have observed in ourselves and others that one’s experiences, upbringing, previous work, etc. filter how we see the world. Indeed, how could they not? Often, the filtering function can be observed in the choice of terms and how those terms interact with one another, in what rhetorical theorist and critic Kenneth Burke called “terministic screens” that “select, reflect, and deflect” attention: We must use terministic screens since we can’t say anything without the use of terms; whatever terms we use, they necessarily constitute a corresponding kind of screen; and any such screen necessarily directs the attention to one field rather than another.
Ideologies create group cohesion and division. They enable and constrain possibilities through social power built in part by language and symbol use.
Ideologies are not static; they require continual circulation of communication to maintain, grow, evolve, and spread. What examples can you think of to show this continual circulation of communication to create group identity and cohesion? Ideologies are also not completely isolated or unitary; you probably belong to several communities with overlapping or sometimes opposed ideologies.
Specialized Term: Ideograph
Rhetorical analysts who examine ideology use a specific enabling concept, the ideograph, to help focus their efforts.
Rhetorical theorist Michael Calvin McGee defined the ideograph in a classic journal article in 1980.
In other words, an ideograph is not a special term; it’s an everyday term that regular people would use, but ideographs are used in context as part of some group’s hierarchy of values.
Examples of typical US ideographs are such words as freedom, liberty, security, religion, rights, property, and privacy or short phrases such as the melting pot, law and order, or the American Dream.
Ideographs are like the label on the outside of a box, for example, a box labeled <the American Dream>, <law and order>, or <freedom>. All of those might look different depending on which group is using the ideograph as shorthand for its particular history, values, commitments, and purposes.
Ideographs are defined and used in different ways by different audiences and groups. But ideographs are taken for granted in their context–they are shared and usually unquestioned in a group’s ideology. Their use throughout a given discourse or rhetorical artifact provides a powerful index to the worldview of that group as expressed in and exemplified by that artifact. Indeed, McGee calls ideographs “the basic structural elements, the building blocks, of ideology.” These building blocks are used by individuals in relation to groups but persist and evolve beyond the contexts of single rhetors or single occasions. Ideographs operate individually and in clusters with other associated ideographs in a particular group's ongoing efforts to maintain a collective commitment to values and purposes and to differentiate the particular group from other groups.
Noticing ideographs and how they work individually and in connection with one another can help you understand and analyze how a particular group’s ideology is created and maintained by rhetoric. As Kelly Jensen explains,
A careful analysis of how ideographic clusters signify meaning through associating with other value terms can explain why ideologies circulate and adopt alternative meanings among various communities.
Specialized Term: Hegemony
One final concept will help you to learn about ideological rhetorical analysis: the concept of hegemony (heh-JEMM-uh-knee).
In other words, hegemony operates at the level of the orthodox, default, taken-for-granted, "that's just the way things are" common sense (as in the shared assumptions and views about truth and values) in a particular culture. That common sense is reinforced via education; economics, commerce, and finance; media; religion; law; police and military; politics; aesthetics; and art.
Hegemony encompasses the constant need for broad consent to the prevailing view to be maintained (and to withstand challenges) by general consent, not by top-down force as the only means. Hegemony operates in part through material means or even force, but also through the circulation of rhetoric. Benedetto Fontana, a scholar of political philosophy, explains it this way:
[H]egemony describes the ways and methods by which consent is generated and organized, which, in turn, is directly related to the mechanisms and processes by which knowledge and beliefs are first, produced, and second, disseminated.
Fontana goes on to explain that ideologies are constantly coming in contact with differing ideologies. But "[t]he hegemonic conception is one that has become the "common sense" of the people. In this conflict between worldviews, "a counterconception (counter to the dominant ideology) is constantly generated, even if only embryonically, to challenge the prevailing common sense." Particularly flexible hegemonic ideologies can sometimes absorb, deflect, subvert, or co-opt competing conceptions rather than simply silence them through coercive power.
Noam Maggor, a scholar of American history, offers this pithy restatement of the concept of hegemony:
a worldview enshrined in the existing social order and shored up in public policy: in the tax system ..., in the legal system, in political institutions, and in actual practice.
Depending on your interest, your artifact, and your goals as an analyst, it may be fruitful to use the concept of hegemony, both for what it can illuminate about the dominance of the powerful within a culture and the resistance of those who would seek to change or subvert the dominant taken-for-granted orthodoxy.
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