Opinions and Ideologies in the Press

1 Aims Editorials and op-ed articles in the presa are generally expected to express opinions. (Op-ed articles are opinion pieces published on the page opposite the editorials.) Depending on the type and the stance of the newspaper, these opinions may vary considerably in their ideological presuppositions. This rather common formulation seems to imply that the ideologies of journalists somehow influence their opinions, which in turn influence the discourse structures of the opinión articles. Within the framework of a larger project on discourse ideology, this chapter examines some of the theoretical properties of these complex relafions between ideology, opinions and media discourse. For instance, we need to spell out what exactly we mean by 'ideology' here, what the nature is of the common-cense notion of an 'opinion', and by what discourse structures they may be expressed. At one level of analysis, opinions and ideologies involve beliefs or mental representations, and our approach therefore first takes a

22 Teun A. van Dijk cognitive perspective. On the other hand, the ideologies and opinions of newspapers are usually not personal, but social, institutional or political. This requires an account in terms of social or societal structures. In fact, we integrate both approaches finto one sociocognitive theory that deals with shared social representations and their acquisition and uses in social contexts. And finally, since we examine in particular the sometimes subtle textual expressions of ideologically based opinions, this sociocognitive orientation will be embedded in a discourse analytical framework (for details, see van Dijk, 1995). This approach is unique in rejecting the theoretical reduction that characterizes virtually all past and contemporary approaches to ideology. As is the case for language and knowledge, ideologies too are very complex social phenomena, which require independent conceptual analysis and empirical description at various theoretical...