NEWS & EVENTS

Appliable Linguistics Seminar 39
(Seminar on Language Science and System Science 105)

Time: 16:00, 10 May 2017
Venue: #304, School of Foreign Languages
Speaker: Dr. Lai Liangtao

Title: Ideology in Critical Discourse Analysis
Abstract: Ideology is the focus and the major source of insight in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). This paper is intended to get a profile of the conception of ideology in CDA based on a comparative survey of the views about ideology held by major scholars in the field. It is found that in CDA, ideology is regarded as the underlying social belief system of a social group as the fruition of the group’s cognitive activities. It has a schematic structure, and features relative stability, logic coherence, inner difference and variability, and constructs the subjective identity of the social group. The criterion for ideology is its social effect rather than truthfulness. Ideology is shaped by and realized in the discourse activities of social groups, and in turn conditions such discourse activities. It constructs and is constructed by the structure, particularly the power structure of a society, and is an important means for the formation and management of social power. However, there are also loopholes in the current theorization of ideology, e.g. the vague criterion for the identification of ideology, inadequate attention to explicit and conscious ideology, and the ignorance of the role of individual members’ value in group ideology.
Key words: ideology, discourse, society, construction