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Language, Linguistics and Ideology

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War and Its Ideologies

Part of the book series: The M.A.K. Halliday Library Functional Linguistics Series ((TMAKHLFLS))

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Abstract

This chapter introduces the central problem of the book: how language allows us to legitimate war, yet stigmatize violence. In the twentieth century, an estimated 111 million people were killed directly through the violence perpetrated during wars, while many millions more died of indirect war-related causes. Yet war is rationalized, celebrated and even commemorated. This paradox shows the profound power of ideology. Ideology is semiotic, although of all semiotic modalities, it is language which ideology most depends on. Language is the engine-room of ideology. The chapter explores the three ways of modeling the relationship between language and ideology: (1) language and ideology are completely distinct, (2) language is sometimes or mostly ideological, (3) language is always ideological. Some scholars holding these various positions are discussed. I argue why it is only the third of these positions that is viable. Ideology, as Hasan argues, is simply an artefact of the use of language. Finally, the chapter introduces the case study which forms the basis for understanding how language protects war from semantic relations that would otherwise make it abhorrent.

The illusion of the powerlessness of language in construing reality, quite paradoxically, becomes the greatest source of its power: it becomes the most powerful instrument for the maintenance of ideology.

Ruqaiya Hasan (1988)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Global Conflict Trends 2017 report, at http://www.systemicpeace.org/index.html

  2. 2.

    In recent years the term “Critical Discourse Analysis” is also being referred to as “Critical Discourse Studies ” (Wodak and Meyer 2016).

  3. 3.

    A recent statement in Wodak and Meyer (2016, 12), however, suggests another tendency: “In sum, defining features of CDS are its concern with power as a central condition in social life, and its efforts to develop a theory of language that incorporates this phenomenon as a major premise” (my emphasis).

  4. 4.

    Verschueren’s book includes a considerable body of data pertaining to the focus for his study, the “Indian mutiny” (nearly 150 pages of c. 370 are raw data), but as it is intended as a course book, the analysis in the book is indicative only. The various guidelines in Verschueren’s manual, although based on references to the supplied data, “do not in themselves constitute a fullblown analysis on the basis of which definitive conclusions can be drawn” (Verschueren 2012, 191–92).

  5. 5.

    But see Lukin (2013); and https://libcom.org/history/how-noam-chomsky%E2%80%99s-world-works-david-hawkes

  6. 6.

    This broad conception of ideology, according to Morris, can be derived from the meaning of the Russian word ideologiya: “The Russian ideologiya is less politically colored than the English word ‘ideology’: It is not necessarily a consciously held political belief system; rather it can refer in a more general sense to the way in which members of a given social group view the world” (Morris 2009, 245).

  7. 7.

    I have drawn particularly on Malešević’s thesis as a robust model based in historical sociology and which, via Weber , takes the force of meaning seriously.

  8. 8.

    When words are italicised, I am making reference to that word as a lexical item.

  9. 9.

    This view was put, among others, by Former UK Foreign Secretary, David Miliband (http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/iraq-war-created-isis-concedes-david-miliband-1460557), and the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Retired Lt. General Michael Flynn (http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/iraq-war-isis-michael-flynn_us_565c83a9e4b079b2818af89c?section=australia).

  10. 10.

    These figures are for period 01/01/03 to 06/03/18.

  11. 11.

    The text in Chap. 5 is used with permission of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The text used in Chap. 6 is used with permission of The Independent.

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  1. Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

    Annabelle Lukin

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Lukin, A. (2019). Language, Linguistics and Ideology. In: War and Its Ideologies. The M.A.K. Halliday Library Functional Linguistics Series. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0996-0_1

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