Language, Ideology

and the World View

Presented to: Dr. Shirin Zubair

By: Rana Faqir Muhammad Aslam

What is Language?
• The most powerful means of
communication
• Determines the identity of the user
• Shows social status of the user
• Indicates the ethnic group
 Different ways of looking at language

• A systematic way of combining smaller

units into larger units
• We use language to say what we mean
• We use language:
• referentially
• affectively
 Referentially Affectively
• Put those books on • Put the books down on
the table.
the table
• Can you put the books on
the table.

• I wonder if you’d mind

putting the books on the
table, please.
 Referentially Affectively
• The referential • The affective function
function is the one of language is
associated with what concerned with who is
objects and ideas are allowed to say what to
called and how events whom, which is
are described deeply tied up with
power and social
status
 Signitive power of language:
• to propagate different ideologies
• gives access to the world view of the
powerful
• makes the less powerful accept this world
view
• consolidates the system of the distribution
of power
 What is Ideology?
• One of the most complicated concepts
• A variety of theoretical approaches
• Heavily charged with political
connotations
• Widely used in everyday life with the
most diverse significations
 First used by Destutt de Tracy
• Ideology is the "science of ideas," insisting
that only through a rigorous ideological
application the truth could be ascertained
and false knowledge debunked
• Ideology is a set of ideas – especially ideas
which challenged traditional systems of
belief
 Napolean Bonaparte
• ideology was something that stood in the
way of practical action
• ideology was too idealistic and its goals
unattainable
• We must lay the blame for the ills that our fair
France has suffered on ideology, the shadowy
metaphysics.... (Napolean Bonaparte)
 Mechiavelli (1469–1527)
• His ideas can be related to ideology
when he talks on the use of force and
fraud in order to get and maintain
power
 Karl Marx (1818–1883)
• the ideas of the ruling class are in every
epoch the ruling ideas
• ruling material force of society is its ruling
intellectual force
• Control over material production leads to
control over means of mental production
 Louis Althusser (A follower of Marx)
• the poor had been persuaded that the state
of affairs of their poverty was ‘natural’
 Michel Foucault
• His project has been to critique the
production of ‘truth’ and therefore refuses
to link ‘ideology’ with any rigid, settled
notion of truth
• He came eventually to drop the use of
ideology for his preferred term, ‘discourse’
• He extends discourse into the way
knowledge is produced
 Ideology used for 3 senses
• to refer to certain beliefs

• to refer to false or distorted beliefs

• to refer to all kinds of beliefs whether true

or false
 Karl Mannheim
• distinguishes between the ‘particular
conception’ of ideology and the ‘total
conception’ of ideology

• The ‘particular conception’ of ideology

denotes that we are sceptical of ideas
advanced by our opponents
 What is World View?
• It is the ‘total conception’ of ideology
• ‘the ideology of an age or of a concrete historico-
social group, e.g. of a class, when we are
concerned with the characteristics and
composition of the total structure of the mind of
this epoch or of this group.
(Mannheim 1929)
• This meaning comes closer to what is thought of
to be the World View
 Anthropologists on World View
• How primitive peoples understand reality
• The terms ‘cognitive view’, ‘world view
perspective’, ‘basic assumptions’, ‘implicit
premises’, ‘World Outlook’ are used as
synonyms
• Redfield describes world view as ‘that
outlook upon the universe that is
characteristic of a people’
Benjamin Lee Whorf & Edward Sapir
• the world view was in a sense shaped by
language
• it is the language that shapes and structures
thought
• language and world view are in a circular
relationship
Developing society like Pakistan
• There cannot be a single or monolithic and
unchanging world view

• There can only be fluid, diversified,

pluralistic world views in various degrees of
flux
 Languages; vehicles of world view
• value-laden diction

• being intelligent, fast, enterprising, bold,

charismatic, beautiful, rich and respected
are terms of positive valuation
 Ideology-laden words: Shaheed
• The word used frequently to arouse
emotions of the masses
• Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto
• Ziaul Haq
• Every army officer that dies
• Christian officer
• Indians used for Kargil dead
 Ideology-laden words: Democracy

• Ayub Khan’s ‘basic democracy’ was control

over electoral colleges
• Ziaul Haq’s ‘Islamic democracy’ was a
camouflage for his own rule.
• General Pervez Musharaf talks of ‘true
democracy’ without introducing complete
civilian control
The male dominating values of our culture

• women’s sexuality is stigmatized

• A woman cannot confess to have male friends, let
alone lovers
• The words pertaining to honour – izzat, asmat,
ghairat, sharam, haya – all refer, much more
seriously, to female waywardness than to male. …
From this notion of sexuality comes the strong
imperative of hiding away the female, seen
primarily as a sexual object, from other males
(Tariq Rehman)
 Ideology after 9 – 11
• The concept of terrorism and Jihad
• Terrorism is an act that restores an irreducible singularity
to the heart of a generalized system of exchange. All those
singularities (species, individuals, cultures) that have been
sacrificed to the interests of a global system of commerce
avenge themselves by turning the tables with terror. Terror
against terror – this is no longer an ideological notion. We
have gone well beyond ideology and politics
• Question mark on the concept of ideology and the
world view after 9–11
References:
• Tariq Rehman ‘Language, Ideology and Power’
• David Hawkes ‘Ideology’
• Jorge Lorrain ‘The Concept of Ideology’
• R. L. Trask ‘Key Concepts in Language and
Linguistics’
• Shan Wareing, Jason Jones and Jean Stlwell
Peccei ‘Language, Society and Power’
• Leong Yew www.
 Thank you
4 ur
patience

Rana Faqir Muhammad Aslam