Ideology in Critical Discourse Study: A Review of Literature

Ideology is one of the most crucial concepts in Critical Discourse Study (CDS). This article systematically reviews relevant literature to the definition of ideology, research models of ideology, and language-based ideology studies from the perspective of CDS. It also provides implications for further research in this field, with the aim of promoting the development of CDS as well as ideology study. It can be found that in the field of CDS, ideology has the characteristics of universality and neutrality. It does not have derogatory meanings or specificity, but rather a characteristic that any language user inevitably carries in language use. At present, there are mainly five models for ideological analysis from the perspective of CDS, namely Fairclough’s Three-Dimension Framework, Wodak’s Discourse-Historical Approach, van Dijk’s Socio-cognitive Model, Chilton’s Cognitive Critical Analysis Model and Thompson’s Methodological Framework of Depth Hermeneutics. Ideology is often subtly hidden in discourse in specific language forms, requiring readers to consciously decode them, and the decoding process can also be seen as the process of ideological reproduction. Lexical and syntactic choices, transitivity, and modality in language use can be effectively used for ideological analysis. All in all, ideology is a very important research topic in critical discourse study, and future studies can adopt interdisciplinary research methods to further improve its theoretical and applied studies.