Ideology Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Ideology - Essay ExampleOf course, by its manifestations in every aspect of the material world including social structure and gender roles, ideology comes to perplex a material existence of its own (165). When I express my own thoughts in my own words I am greatly circumscribed by ideological norms about what I bottom express and how I can express it whether to a single listener or to a global audience. By qualification visible the powerful influences on conference (the material relations between author and recipient the choice of form and style as historically determined), the new-sprung(prenominal)s report of ideology enables a piece of communication to be viewed as a product of the status quo with which it dialectically engages.Language - whether verbal or nonverbal - is a system of symbols which are given meaning by mutual prevailment. There is no universal physical reality to the representation of a particular entity by the word dog. In the case of onomatopoeic words th ere is some auditory similarity between the represented sound and the representing word e.g. bow wow is a well-situated mimicry of a dog barking. But the vast majority of signifiers words (me), signs (the exclamation point) and symbols (the Mitsubishi logo) are pure symbols the signification is perfectly non-representative. The most sophisticated forms of communication are purely symbolic the oldest known script, Sumerian hieroglyphics, began with representative drawings which became more and more stylised and symbolic. Of course, the non-universality of symbols is not obvious when we learn a language we agree that dog indicates a particular entity in the real world and that the purely arbitrary collection of symbols dog is associated with particular ways of moving our articulators and producing sound.Is language then, artificial Noam Chomsky suggests that human beings are born with the inherent ability to imbibe language and this ability seems to be universal. People can learn new languages well into late life and babies can acquire multiple languages simultaneously and apparently effortlessly. It is not language that is artificial but the particular significations (signifier-signified relationships) of whatever given language. This kind of artificiality typifies ideology or any of its components, for example the ascription of certain human qualities to inanimate entities (the rose as a symbol of love suggests something about the culture that accepts such a symbol). any given communication, whether interpersonal or mass-scale, can then be viewed as an iceberg, with the bulk of meaning residing under the level of consciousness. A rose with its petals being torn off by the wind evokes strong emotions not attributable to the mere sensation of watching a flower being disassembled. The rose is not saying anything new rather, its very presence and conditions call forth a predictable set of responses to quote Barthes it comes and seeks me out in order to oblige me to acknowledge the body of intentions which yield motivated it and arranged it there as the signal of an individual history, as a confidence and a complicity (Mythologies 48).The tremendous importance of