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Ideology and Social Sciences: A Communicational Approach: Eliseo Veron
Ideology and Social Sciences: A Communicational Approach: Eliseo Veron
2. METACOMMUNICATION
3
Ibid. See also N. Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge, Mass.,
The M.I.T. Press, 1965) and Current Issues in Linguistic Theory (The Hague, Mouton
& Co., 1967).
is executed, "as far as it is not the only possible manner", and he has
called it STYLE.7 Prieto's conception of 'style9 coincides with what we
call here, from the point of view of information transmission, meta-
communication. The manner according to which an operation (denota-
tion) is carried on, manifests itself through the selective and combinatory
decisions made by the sender. It makes sense to speak of a decision-
making process only when there is MORE THAN ONE POSSIBLE WAY of
denoting some set of extralinguistic entities. This decision-making
process generates messages having TWO LEVELS OF MEANING. On the one
hand, we have the message composed by linguistic signs fulfilling a
denotative function. Each of them may be analyzed into significans and
significatum. This is the level of COMMUNICATION. On the other hand,
the fact that the sender has made these particular decisions concerning
selection and combination, within this particular communicational
situation, creates a second level of meaning: the field of connotation.
This field comprises what may be called the METACOMMUNICATIONAL
phenomena. The notion of metacommunication refers to a process of
transmission of information concerned not with the content of the
messages, BUT WITH THE SELECTIVE AND COMBINATORY OPERATIONS
MADE BY THE SENDER.8
Ashby offers a classical example directly related to the fundamental
principle of metacommunication.9 Two countries, A and B, are at war.
Each of them takes a soldier of the other as a prisoner. Some time after,
the wives of both prisoners receive the following message:
"I am well"
It is known that in country A the prisoners may send to their families
one of the following messages:
"I am well"
"I am slightly ill"
"I am seriously ill"
7
Luis J. Prieto, "Lengua y connotation", in E. Veron (ed.), Lenguaje y comunicacion
social (Buenos Aires, Nueva Vision, 1969). See also Messages et signaux (Paris,
PUF, 1966), 164-65.
8
In many papers, Gregory Bateson and his co-workers in the USA have developed
the concept of metacommunication. See in particular Bateson's chapters in J. Ruesch
and Gregory Bateson, Communication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry (New York,
Norton, 1951), and P. Watzlawick, J. Beavin, and D. Jackson, Pragmatics of Human
Communication (New York, Norton, 1967). An analysis of connotative processes as
they relate to ideology has been carried out by Roland Barthes. See especially his
paper "Le my the, aujourd'hui" in: Mythologies (Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1957).
9
W. Ross Ashby, An Introduction to Cybernetics (London, Chapman & Hall, 1956).
12
If we define ideology as a level of meaning of messages manifestly centered in
the referential function, PROPAGANDA may be distinguished from ideology as the
discourse centered in the conative function. On the functions of linguistic messages,
see Jakobson, Essais de linguistique generate (Paris, fiditions de Minuit), chapter 11.
13
See E. Veron, "Ideologia y comunicacion de masas: la semantizacion de la
violencia politica", in Lenguaje y comunicacion social.
14
Ibid.
Mass-medium A Mass-medium B
(middle-class circulation) (working-class circulation)
The Nation:
The first gunfires Political assassination
discourse within society. This issue leads us far beyond any isolated
proposition, and forces us to ask for the properties of the semantic
universe from which a given scientific text has been originated.
Third, it should be clear from what has been said that the relationship
between science and ideology has nothing to do with the issue of 'value
judgments' nor with the difference between value judgments and factual
statements. This is a typical approach to the problem that makes sense
only at the level of isolated propositions. The presence of an ideological
dimension in scientific discourse is independent from that distinction:
it stems from the system of implicit decisions underlying the construction
of scientific messages. This system supposes an evaluative dimension,
but the manifest product at the level of social communication processes
is a body of propositions that are assertive or descriptive in form. As far
as evaluation operates at the level of the conditions of message produc-
tion, it does not appear within discourse itself.
Fourth, the analysis of these problems from the viewpoint of prag-
matics liberates us from a useless discussion. Sociology of knowledge has
always had a tendency to translate the fact of the social conditioning of
knowledge into an epistemological principle. As a consequence, we face
a lot of difficulties. The most classical one is that of relativism and its
internal contradiction. If we affirm that knowledge about the social is
always socially conditioned and relative, then this very statement is
relative, and so it is not true that social knowledge is relative, et cetera.
These circles ARE vicious, and there is no utility in following them.
Epistemology defines, at a formal level, the conditions of the possibility
of knowledge; methodology, also at a formal level, states the norms
designed to fulfill these conditions. But the problem of objectivity begins
where these norms end, because it is an empirical problem. And as every-
body knows, questions of fact have to be investigated, and formal rules
do not help us to decide about empirical matters. Social scientists, once
the consensus around the formal principles has been obtained, often
make an illegitimate transposition: if the possibility of objectivity cannot
be denied, we ARE objective in our work. To raise doubts about this fact
is to be against scientific ethos. Nevertheless, all difficulties concerning
the role of ideology begin at the level of scientific PRACTICE, and therefore
this is the point where the question arises of the responsibility of social
scientists and their commitment to truth.