Sull’ideologia: una riflessione tra modelli semiotici e prospettive di analisi pragmatica

While not representing a properly semiotic category, ideology has a close interrelation with categories of semiotic interest, such as, for instance, sign and language, text and textuality, culture and values, and social systems. This explains why, mainly in the 1960s and 1970s, scholars like Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco, and Ferruccio Rossi–Landi elaborated semiotic theories on ideology, laying the theoretical bases for later critical reflections, revisions, and further proposals. Nowadays, reflections on ideology are not a constant presence in the landscape of semiotic studies, and this is a common feature with ideology studies themselves. In this essay, I reconstruct the relationship between semiotic theories and ideology in an attempt to indicate, through a critical reflection, which current semiotic tools are most relevant for understanding the ideological configurations underlying social and cultural discourses.