Discourse Semantics and Ideology

This article presents fragments of a new, multidisciplinary theory of ideology and its relations with discourse, formulated in the broader framework of a critical discourse analysis. Ideologies are defined as basic systems of fundamental social cognitions and organizing the attitudes and other social representations shared by members of groups. They thus indirectly control the mental representations (models) that form the interpretation basis and contextual embeddedness of discourse and its structures. In this framework, it is examined how semantic structures of discourse (such as topic, focus, propositional structure, local coherence, level of description, implications and macrostructures) are monitored by underlying ideologies, as expressed in opinion articles in the New York Times and the Washington Post.