To Örebro University

This article is the second part (Part II) of a longer essay with the aim to propose a unified analytical framework, or a general theory, of ideological thought content. As we saw in Part I (in Statsvetenskaplig Tidskrift 2018/2) I suggest that all social and political communication and language consists of three basic kinds of thought: values (V), descriptions (D) and prescriptions (P). These are connected in quasi-logical sequences of practical reasoning. On these grounds I propose the theoretical model of the VDP-triad. I also present an attached analytical scheme for content-oriented idea-analysis and idea-criticism. The scheme involves two basic levels of ideological thought – present in all social and political thought and language – the fundamental level (of philosophical principles, worldviews or human nature) and the operative level (of practical analyses of the situation and practical suggestions for action). My general method in theory development is presented as reconstructive theoretical synthesis, drawing on earlier, prevailing theories and empirical research of the ideational phenomenon in society. Part One consisted of Chapter One, ‘Bringing ideas back in’ (Sections 1–7), and Chapter Two, ‘Encircling the proposed general theory’ (Sections 8–14).

  Part Two, here (published in Statsvetenskaplig Tidskrift 2018/3-4) moves from hypotheses and preliminaries to actual, constructive theoretical work. Chapter Three is titled ‘The three main concepts of ideology in the prevailing knowledge situation; and the three main concepts of discourse’. This chapter contains a critical investigation of the three main theoretical traditions in contemporary social science regarding the ideational phenomenon in society, each with a concept of ‘ideology’ of its own. In Section 16 we find the sociological knowledge tradition and the concept of ‘culture’ where ‘ideology’ is seen as a sub-variant of ‘culture’. In section 17 we find the political science knowledge tradition and the concept of (plural) ‘political ideologies’ in parties and organizations on the input side of the political system. In section 18 we find the Marxist tradition with the notion of ‘the (dominating) ideology in society’, including the Foucauldian concept of a ‘(dominating) discourse’; I thus include Foucault and the Foucauldians in the Marxist family tree. In Section 19 I turn to the concept of ‘discourse’ as it is used in the discipline of linguistics, in studies of social and political language. My main concern is how the concept of ‘ideology’ in the prominent research program Critical Discourse Analysis is related to the linguistic concept of ‘discourse’. Later, in Chapter Four, Section 20, we will brush against some more conceptualizations in other, approach-bound terminologies regarding social and political ideas.

   Chapter four, ‘Working towards the general theory’ (Sections 20–22) is a kind of bridge between the critical explorations of the theoretical traditions in the prevailing knowledge situation (in Chapter Three) and the actual reconstruction-construction of the proposed general theory. In Chapter four we will meet a flowerbed of analytical concepts used in various empirical approaches, like ‘belief-system’, ‘frame’ or ‘policy’ (Section 20). I show a possible way how these concepts might be integrated in my general theory of ideological thought-content, the VDP-triad. Or to put it the other way around, how the concept ‘ideological thought-content’ of the VDP-triad would be possible to use in any of these different approaches. After that we meet (Section 21) the underlying assumption of communicative actions and interactions as the social theoretical anchorage for my theorizing (see also Part I, Section 8; and Section 16 here below). We also meet the underlying assumption of language in my theorizing (Section 22), where the (ordinary) social and political language in communicative actions is proposed to be generically dialogical, dialectical or argumentative (see also Part I, Section 14; and Section 29 here below). Chapter five, at last, is titled ‘Proposing the general theory’ and is doing exactly that. In the Sections 23–28 all building-bricks and connective fittings that have been brought forward so far in the foregoing chapters are assembled, ending up in the VDP-triad as the backbone of my proposed general theory. Section 29 is a comment on the intricacies of the methodological use of the VDP-triad, the procedure of interpretation in the process of discerning and describing the three basic kinds of thought involved in all social and political thought, communication and language. Then follows Chapter six, the conclusion (Section 30), where I summarize the perceived merits of my proposed general theory, suggesting it as ‘The strong alternative’ among other, available theoretical suggestions.