Ideology and Ontology

Abstract

Although the word 'ideology' was originally coined at the end of the eighteenth century by Destuut de Tracy, latterly, of course, the history of the term has been a Marxist one. For Marx, an ideology is used by a class to mask its own interests; we unmask an ideology when we discover the interests that it serves. By ideology, a class rationalizes the acceptance of the privileges it obtains from the status quo. It is particularly significant that in Marx's own usage, the term is one of opprobrium and implies self-deception. Neither Sorel's concept of 'social myths' nor Pareto's concept of 'derivations' carries quite the same overtones of class warfare, or indeed self-deception.,-I shall use the word 'ideology' in the widest sense. Any comprehensive world-view constitutes an ideology, on this view: such a world-view will contain both an ontology and a set of values. The norm is for a society to have what we may call an ideology of the establishment; this may in turn represent only the common features of a number of more or less similar ideologies which thus form a family: against these may be set the counter-ideologies of criminal and other sub-cultures and those more distinct ideologies which are genuinely revolutionary in that they seek radically to change the nature of the society. The ideologies of English Catholics, Plymouth Brothers, Welsh

Educators’ beliefs about English and languages beyond English: From ideology to ontology and back again

“…The interpretation afforded by our ontological approach confirms the view that ontologies of English and other languages are subjective and influenced by ideologies. However, our view (following Sharpe 1974) distinguishes what is believed to exist (ontological categories) from the values associated with those entities (ideological beliefs). Our interpretation extends Sharpe's (1974) view to recognise that ontological categories themselves can be created by ideological value attribution in separate ontological domains.…”

“…In this more specific sense, they can support hegemonic social structures and, conversely, can motivate resistance to and/or rejection of hegemony. The powerful social leverage they give rise to is possible because of their entrenched nature (Sharpe, 1974;Weaver, 2019). This is reflected in a naturalizing effect, whereby the content of ideological beliefs is held to be part of the natural state of the world-and this, we contend, becomes an ontological issue.…”

“…In an overlooked publication from several decades ago, Sharpe (1974) argued that '[a]ny comprehensive world-view constitutes an ideology […]: such a world view will contain both an ontology and a set of values' (55). We believe that this explicit recognition of the bipartite nature of ideologies as 'ontologies plus values' is a useful one which has not been duly recognised in previous research.…”

“…The role of value attribution in distinguishing between ontology and ideology has not figured prominently in the literature since Sharpe (1974), although it is indirectly and implicitly recognised in some work. An example is the following comment by Nightingale and Cromby (1999: 8), about realist and relativist epistemologies in social constructionism:…”

An Ontological Framework for English

“…The second set of ontological types is socially constructed on the basis of the contemplation of the first set and corresponds to the conceptualizations underpinning value-laden ideologies of English (cf. Sharpe, 1974;Canagarajah, this volume, Section 4). I contend that the construals of English in this set are all directly or indirectly derived from the process of collective identification (Jenkins, 2004) holding at the level of NATION.…”