Ideology.

It was interesting to read how ideology worked as prescriptive and descriptive words.

Prescriptive words contain a notion of how things ought to be, “a kind of new course that might somehow be free from the mystification of false ideas” (TT 84). We often make our own generalizations or assumptions to what causes an issue or idea, such as teen crime and binge drinking discussed in the chapter, but usually our assumptions are false or misleading. Prescriptive tends to look for more concrete explanations, rather than certain generalizations on the subject. It wants to go to the core of the subject and find the real explanation to the cause or cover up. I think that ideas such as binge drinking and teen crime have causes that we are used to hearing because that’s what we want to believe.

Descriptive words tend to deal with knowledge. “There has to be some consensus on what the present material conditions mean, a kind of common agreement about the way things are” (TT 85). This deals primarily within a culture or social group. There is often a “common sense” within the norms and the values of the society of which we live. “Its just the way it is,” and that’s how its going to be. We have norms within TCU, within our family, and within our culture that we live up to and follow because that is what we have learned to believe is what’s right. To disobey or follow different norms would be unfamiliar to our culture.

This chapter ends with, “the task of ideology critique is to make the familiar seem a bit more strange and thereby to make us consistently examine the things that we all too often take for granted” (TT 91). I think this really expresses the main theme of ideology and the use for it. It’s a way to stay away from the notion of how things ought to be and look deeper into a concept which makes the idea unfamiliar, as well as using what we know to build on our ideas.