Ideology and Discourse in Contemporary Social Sciences and the Humanities and the Role of Sociology in their Conceptuali
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Ideology and Discourse in Contemporary Social Sciences and the Humanities and the Role of Sociology in their Conceptualization Oxana Mikhaylova 1
& Roman
Abramov 2,3
Accepted: 13 November 2020 / Published online: 16 November 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Discourse and ideology are interrelated concepts in social sciences and the humanities and are even occasionally employed interchangeably. This paper sheds light on their relationship in academic discourse and examines the role of sociology as a scientific field in its conceptualization. Using bibliometric analysis, we examined 15,716 academic publications mentioning “discourse” or “ideology” in their title and written in English by American and British scholars between 1966 and 2015. The investigation focused on the two terms’ conceptual environment, areas of usage, journals, and the organizations to which the authors were affiliated. First, we conclude that although some sociology researchers have attempted to create a sociological definition for the concept of discourse, sociologists are not its most active users. The same is true for ideology. These concepts have established niches in other disciplines (political science and history for “ideology,” and educational science and linguistics for “discourse”). Second, throughout the years, the field of discourse studies has become more diversified and fragmented than that of ideology. Third, the leading organizations in both fields are prestigious American and British universities, which indicates that discourse and ideology are elements of the intellectual elites’ language. Fourth, the concept of discourse was more frequently applied than that of ideology in the years 2010–2015, and we expect that it will remain popular among scholars in the next decade. As for ideology, we believe that new social challenges could foster the rediscovery of this concept in the near future. Keywords Ideology . Discourse . Bibliometrics . Concept analysis
* Oxana Mikhaylova [email protected] Roman Abramov [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
The American Sociologist (2020) 51:566–583
567
Discourse and ideology are interrelated concepts that are widely used in social sciences and the humanities. Speech acts analysis, mass and individual consciousness investigation, power and domination examination, and social movements research are only a few subject matters which facilitated the invention, development, and application of these very concepts. Despite similarities in the meanings often attributed to discourse and ideology by scholars and laypeople, these notions have different origins and genesis. Their relations throughout history range from rivalry to symbiosis. We posit that the changes in the usage of the concepts of discourse and ideology in academic discourse reflect epistemic configurations and conjuncture transformations in the history of social sciences and the humanities. Therefore, in this paper, we analy
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