Open Journal of Modern Linguistics
2013. Vol.3, No.2, 135-140
Published Online June 2013 in SciRes (http://www.scirp.org/journal/ojml) http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ojml.2013.32018
Representational Pattern of Discursive Hegemony
Ming Liu
The Department of Foreign Languag e s , Jiangxi Institute of Education, Nanchang, China
Received March 28th, 2013; revis ed Ma y 5th, 2013; a cc e pt ed Ma y 18 th, 2013
Copyright © 2013 Ming Liu. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution
License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original
work is properly cited.
The paper aims to construct a practical representational pattern, which is to uncover the way the discur-
sive hegemony exists in the content of text. The representational pattern will be embarked upon level by
level, mainly from the linguistic perspective such as field of discourse, transitivity, and the choice and
meaning of words. For the reason of non-discursive elements having determined effects in the formation
of discursive hegemony, the paper will also explore hegemony beyond the linguistic perspective by means
of the concept “discourse” constructed in Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis model. In addition, a
particular written text will be chosen to further testify the way of how hegemony is represented in a par-
ticular text or discourse.
Keywords: Critical Discourse Analysis; Representation; Hegemony; Manipulation
Introduction
Hegemony has been exten sively expounded from t he political,
cultural and social aspects (Gramsci, 1971; Augelli, 1988; Bald-
win et al., 2004, 2005; Foucault, 1971; Joseph, 2002). In recent
years, the concept of hegemony has been explored in Critical
Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 1995, 2003; Dijk, 2001), in
which hegemony is generally discussed along with discourse.
The relationship between hegemony and discourse has attained
enough attentions from analysts of CDA more than other areas’
researchers who relate hegemony with non-discursive factors.
However analysts of CDA do not elucidate the actual discursive
realization of hegemony with linguistic theories.
Discursive Hegemony as Manipulation
Hegemony in particular social domain is often actualized by
means of non-coercive means, such as the dissemination of form s
of discourse being a carrier of hegemony. Through analyses of
discourse at the level of language, the way of how to represent
hegemony in discourse can be shown in terms of field of dis-
course which is concerned with the whole activities engaged by
participants, of transitivity which explores the way of how to
construe one particular domain o f our experiences, of the lexical
level which aims to uncover the significance of choice of words
in particular context. At last the concept “discourse” abstractly
used by Fairclough will be employed to mediate between the
social dimension of hegemony and those linguistic dimensions,
and to show the vital role of hegemony in the contemporary soci-
ety.
Field of Discourse
A register is a set of meaning potential in a given social con-
text and is more abstract than the immediate situational factors,
such as time and space. According to Halliday, a particular text i s
specified and determined by field, tenor and mode, usually called
“three variables of register”. In this subsection, we will focus on
field of discourse, which deals with social activities in context.
Halliday (1978: p. 110) regards field as “the social action in
which the text is embedded”. Halliday has characterized field of
discourse as follows:
The field of discourse refers to what is happening, to the
nature of the social action that is taking place: what it is that
the participants are engaged in, in which the language fig-
ures as some essential component (Halliday & Hasan, 1989:
p. 12).
According to the level of involvement of language, social ac-
tion forming a cline has generally been classified into three types
without clear boundary (cf. Halliday, 1978: p. 143ff). One type
refers to those activities without considering language, which
plays little role in concrete activity. In the intermediate type of
activity, language functions as a necessary role but still ancillary.
Only in another end of the cline, language being o ne kind of so-
cial semiotic plays a vital role in social activity as Halliday once
claimed that field includes the subject-matter, as one special
manifestation. The reason why Halliday interprets field as sub-
ject-matter is that he takes hold on the view of regarding social
action as being inherently of a sy mbolic, verbal n ature. Language
functions more or less important role in social action which in-
cludes daily action and institutional action. Thus field of dis-
course provides a practicable parameter for researchers who aim
to associate language with discursive he gemony by means of the
concept “field of discourse”. Halliday once used field to analy ze
a passage from a broadcast talk gi ven by a famous churchman (cf.
Halliday & Hasan, 1989: p. 13ff). He described the field of the
passage as “maintenance of institutionalized system of beliefs
(religion) and the members’ attitudes towards it (semi-technical)”.
In the same way, the hegemonic groups (used in the thesis be-
yond political sense) may disseminate their beliefs, values and

M. LIU
ideology, and gain support for themselves from other groups.
Those beliefs and values communicated in the form of language
can be effectively uncovered by using field of discourse.
In this paper, hegemony is not only used in political or eco-
nomic sense, but also in general sense. For example, the rela-
tionship between teachers and students in school may be hege-
monic because teachers always dominate students and want to
gain support for themselves from students by playing the au-
thoritative role in terms of knowledge. For most time, hegemony
occurs at the social institution such as the hegemonic relationship
between teachers and students, between doctors and students,
between interviewers and interviewees. Faiclough states that
“hegemony is a process at the societal level, whereas most
discourse has a more local character, being located in or on
the edges of particular institutions—the family, schools, nei-
ghborhoods, workplaces, courts of law, etc.” (1995: p. 78).
We agree with the idea of taking hegemony as a process at the
societal level, but we assume that hegemony is also located in
particular social institution, even in daily conversation just like
discourse between parents and children. Discourses of generation,
gender, ethnicity, and class channels subjects in very different
ways according to the coding orientations they joy (see Martin,
1992: p. 546). So hege mony implied in di scourse may depend on
those social elements and has diff erent forms in different institu-
tions or arenas. In some institutions, hegemonic relationship be-
tween the dominant and the dominated may be forced to take
effect by means of coercive ways. In some arenas, especially in
less social situation, hegemonic relationship among participants
may go into effect in non-coercive way s. The more or less coer-
cive forms can be assessed along the continuum of institutionali-
zation in Figure 1.
In this Figure, we argue that semantic domain can be catego-
rized with respect to institutionalization. In most cases, institu-
tionalization is a matter of degree; the distinction between institu-
tionalized and non-institutionalized semantic domain does not
have a clear cut boundary. In addition, the categorization se man-
tic domain can be done with rega rd to specialization. Thereby the
more or less coercive forms can be assessed along the continuum
of specialization in Figure 2.
In the contemporary society, social action gets more and more
specialized, and hegemony is often organized and institutional-
ized so that discursive routine can generate effects of discursive
hegemony. In other words, field varies along a dimension of
specialization as schematized above. The more specialized the
field is, the more coercive the hegemonic form takes. For in-
stance, while a professor of SFL is delivering a lecture on register
to students who are equipped wit h little kno wledg e about lin guis-
tics, he uses such technical terms as field, tenor and mode to
explain the meaning of regi ster and takes an authoritative role to
-Institutionalized
-Coercive
+Institutionalized
+ Coercive
Figure 1.
Hegemonic form and institutionalizati on of field.
-Specialization
-Coercive +Specialization
+
Coe
r
c
i
ve
Figure 2.
Hegemonic form and specialization of field.
disseminate the specialized knowledge. In terms of this kind of
knowledge, the relationship between the professor and his stu-
dents is unequal; and the professor will take great effect on his
students in a coercive way, which means that he takes the form of
knowledge to brainwash students’ minds in scholastic way and
conversely students only act as passive roles and have to accept
those “correct” explanation given by their teacher. If supposing a
situation in which the professor discusses the performance of Yao
Ming (a famous basketball play er in NBA) with his students in a
casual way, the relationship between the professor of SFL and his
students may be more equal than that, just mentioned above.
Additionally, it should be empha sized that coercive form may be
understood beyond the physical force mainly done by police or
state, and may extend to the spiritual one including information
or knowledge.
Institutionalization and specialization are two important di-
mensions of field for discussing hegemonic form taken by the
dominant group in a specific semantic domain. In a word, field of
discourse provides a practicable parameter for researchers who
aim to associate language with discur sive hegemony. In the next
subsection, we will discuss discursive hegemony along t ransitiv-
ity.
Transitivity
Transitivity is the representation in language of processes, the
participants and the circumstantial elements associated with them.
Transitivity refers to the language features of the clause which
represent the speaker’s or writer’s experience or something else
around the world, not the narrower meaning as in “transitive and
intransitive verbs”. The definition of transitivity given by Halli-
day (1976: p. 21) is that “transitivity is the name for a particular
range of meaning potential—the encoding of our experience of
processes”. According to Halliday, the transitivity system con-
strues the world of experience into a manageable set of process
types, the six ty pes of which are material, mental, relational, ver-
bal, behavioral and existential processes. Transitivity is concer-
ned with construing one particular domai n of our experience, that
is our experience the flux of “goings-on”, as configurations of a
process (of some general type: material, mental, relational), the
participants involved in it (Actor, Goal; Senser, Phenomenon;
Carrier, Attribute; and so on), and the circumstanc es attendant on
it (Cause, Location, Manner (including means and instrument),
Accompaniment, and so on). The transitivity system of a lan-
guage will construe experience into a small set of domains of
meanings which differ according to the process itself and the
nature of the participants involved in it.
The transitivity system provides a resource ful “mea ning poten-
tial” for language users or interpreters because different process
types can be chosen to represent the same content in the world. In
the article on Golding’s the Inheritors (see Halliday, 1973: p.
103ff), Halliday has shown how selections from the transitivity
system can suggest different world-views. Lok, a Neanderthal
man, cannot grasp the significance of the actions of “The People”
who are invading the territory of Lok’s tribe. The main reason for
that is Loc uses non-transactive action which is distinct from tran-
sactive action performed by “The People”. In short, the choosin g
of process types and the placement of participants and circum-
stances are largely determined by non-discursive elements as well
as hegemonic relationship among interlocutors. As Fowler stated:
Linguistic codes do not reflect reality neutrally; they inter-
pret, organize, and classify the subjects of discourse. They
136

M. LIU
embody theories of how the world is arranged: wor ld-vie ws
or ideologies (1986: p. 27).
It is natural that discourses of gene ration, gender, ethnicity and
class steer participants in the course of communication in very
different ways according to their different coding orientations.
Therefore, it is of necessity to introduce the concept “hegemony ”
into transitivity system for seeing the non-discursive elements
underlain in the structure of clause, and vice versa. The unequal
relationship between speakers/writers and hearers/readers may
have great effect on the choices of process types and the promi-
nence of participants. Consider the following two sentences:
(1) (a) Hornworms sure vary a lot in how well they grow.
(b) Hornworms growth di splays a significant amount of
variations.
It is obvious that the two sentences have differe nt patterning in
terms of grammatical devices though they almost represent the
same proposition al meaning (hornworms change in the course of
growing). The main participant of the first sentence is occupied
by simple noun horn worms while that of the second sentence by
a sort of nominalization hornworm growth which encompasses
an abstract meaning which can be expressed by a whole clause
hornworms grow. Nominalization as a usual grammatical device
used in the scientific discourse often packs a large number of
lexical items into one clause, through which the writer can
achieve his or her aim of o bjectification while expressing an i dea
or concept. Nominalization can be regarded as an effect of the
deletion of participants showing impersonality in style. In the
second sentence, the expression form of nominalization varia-
tions deletes its actor for decreasing the role of the active partici-
pant hornworms in the pr ocess of variation. What t he nomination
variations does is to emphasize the objective attitude towards a
natural phenomenon. The nominalized language seems like pre-
tentious and may take the meaning obscure and abstract. In addi-
tion, the two sentences utilize two different process types to ex-
press the same propositional meaning. The first sentence makes
use of material process to play emphasis on the dynamics of the
Actor hornworms as well as the agency of the participant. Hereby
the form of language emotive marker sure is used in the material
process with a vague phrase a lot to show the personality in style.
However relation process i n the second sentence is used to show
impersonality in style, and stress the property of the Carrier horn-
worms growth which means that hornworms growth may un-
dergo the change in size, weight, strength or other aspects.
In some way, the language used in the second sentence is an
academic social one whereas the language in the first sentence,
according to Gee (2004), belongs to “a vernacular style of lan-
guage”. Both of them reflect two different syntactic patterns,
which are dependent on per spectives held by spea kers or writers.
The vernacular style of language is often c oncerned with human
actors, performing material process in a concrete way, which
shows that language user is willing to negotiate outer or inner
experiences with other interlocutors. In other words, interlocuto rs
can communicate with each other in a less abstract way, which
shows that the relationship betwe en interlocutors in the first sen-
tence is more equal than that in the second sentence if seen from
the perspective of manipulation of language.
When the power holder conceals his intent from the power
subject—that is the intended effect he wishes to produce, he
is attempting to manipulate the latter. In Easton’s words:
“When B is not aware of A’s intention to influenc e him but
A does in fact manage to get B to follow his wishes, we can
say that we have an instance of manipulation” (Wrong,
1979: p. 28).
Manipulation, as one of hegemonic forms, involves reciprocal
asymmetrical interaction between interlocutors. The dominant
may exercise concealed control over the dominated through sy m-
bolic communication, especially language. The manipulation of
language in communication or discourse is related to language
patterns. Halliday identifies two language patterns: congruent
form of language and non-congruent ( metaphorical) form of lan-
guage, which is also called grammatical meta phor, a kind of lin-
guistic phenomenon in which meanings congruently realized by
one type of language pattern get realized by other less congruent
linguistic units or expre ssions. The two language patterns can be
associated with manipulation, whose relationship is outlined in
Figure 3.
The congruent approach to constructing language is less ma-
nipulative in terms of the degree of intended influence than the
incongruent pattern of language. A typical case in point is that the
scientific discourse as the second sentence mentioned above is
mainly used to recode original congruent form of language in
order to achieve a sort of objective effect and reinforce authority
on knowledge. The material process type used in the first sen-
tence has been transformed into the relational process type
stressing on t he static property of the Carrier hornworm s growth.
Thus, the second sentence is more manipulative that the first
sentence from the perspective of language patterns because it
makes the same cont ent more a bstract and obscure to understand
for laymen. The way of recoding language reflects the social po-
sition of language users who dominate and disseminate the so-
called scientific knowledge. In some way, the linguistic structure
of the second sentence encodes under the transitivity system a
scientific world-view and intends to manipulate the vision of
readers or hearers in the light of knowledge. Therefore it is rea-
sonable to accept the idea that “the linguistic structure of a text
effectively encodes a particular world-view” put forward by Sim-
pson (1993: p. 104).
In general, the transitivity system offers us a useful toolkit to
explain the way of how manipula tion, as one of hegemonic form,
is implied in language.
Discursive Hegemony and Representation
Hegemony, as a particular way of conceptualizing power,
places emphasis on how power depends on consent or manipula-
tion rather than physical force or other explicit coe rcive forms. In
contemporary society , hegemony often embodies a set of institu-
tional norms and other conventional rules in such symbolic forms
as newspaper, journal and textbo ok. In other word s, hege mony in
the current society takes the discursive form, which becomes an
important site of maintaining a va riety of power and of struggling
over them. Thus, discourse may be the representation of domi-
nant forces to channel the direction of social and cultural changes
which is influenc ing the contemporary society. It is beneficial to
explore hegemony at the discursive level as Fairclough argues
+Congruent
-Manipulative
-Congruent
+ Manipulative
Figure 3.
Manipulation and language pa tt e rn.

M. LIU
that “hegemonic projects are contested in discursive and other
modes of practice” (1995: p. 91).
Discursive hegemony is molded out of a series of particular
discourses which have more or le ss legitimate nor ms on the basi s
of social hierarchy or other socially naturalized conventions. In
addition, hegemony is never the property of an ind ividual; o nly if
the group keeps together does it b elong to a grou p and remains in
existence. So, it is natural that hegemony confined to a particula r
social group must contain a representational point of view in
terms of voicing of social events. Different people or social group
may encode the same event in distinct way, which is mainly de-
pendent on social conventions formulated by “ideological state
apparatuses” (ISAs). ISA, according to Althusser (1971/2001: p.
96), is concerned with “a certain number of realities, which pre-
sent themselves to the immediate observer in the form of distinct
and specialized institutions”. In simple word, an ISA is an institu-
tion; modern society contains the religious ISA, the educational
ISA, the family ISA, the political ISA, the legal ISA, the trade
union ISA, the communication ISA, the cultural ISA, and so on.
Those ISAs consisting of a kaleidoscope of gorgeous society
represent the same world differently according to their own in-
terests or conventions and then have discourses of their own in-
dependent of each other. For instance, the meaning of the word
“militant” in trade union ISA is different from than that in politi-
cal ISA. In the business institution, “militant” is interpreted as a
synonym of “activist” whereas it may be used as a synonym of
“subversive” in the political institution, both of which take di-
verse representations by using the same word. However, the
lexical item is one of linguistic units that are used to represent the
world. There are a number of other linguistic units (especially
clause) me ans to represent our inner an d outer experience. Cla use,
as a way of representing patterns of experience, has been elabo-
rated in detail within the theoretical framework of Systemic
Functional Linguistics. According to the lingui stic theory , clause,
in the sense of experiential function, mainly consists of three
components, that is the process, participants in the process and
circumstances associated with the process. The grammar of the
clause is very useful to explore the particular way of representing
the world, not to mention the particular way of conceptualizing
power. The choice of the three components in clause reflects the
more or less prominence e mphasized by interlocutors in order to
give voice to their point of views of experiences. Consider, for
example:
(2) (a) An Asian male was beaten up in the street.
(b) A man was beaten up in the street.
(c) Someone was beaten up in the street.
The three possibilities considered here repre sent di fferent ways
of linguistically encoding the experience of a particular event.
The functional slot (Goal) filled by different nouns shows the
degree of suffering the process “was beaten up”. In an official
occasion, a police officer may prefer using (b) or (c) without
mention of the racial identity of the victim. The choice of the
participant (Goal) may be influenced by the encoding orientation
on the basis of the institutional position held by the police. In the
western countries, racism remains one of the most troublesome
problems of white society. Public figures, especially those who
play major roles in the state society, tend to be careful in the
wording. Or else, they will be confronted with criticisms from the
public. The Goal someone in sentence (c) is more general than
that in sentence (b) and indicates that the police officer is not care
about the victim, through which the hidden way of construing
power can be uncovered with the help of the specific discursive
representation. Of course, in this example, the police officer can,
for one reason or another, still privately use (a) to t ell the origi nal
fact. The choice of the participant an Asian male (Goal) in sen-
tence (a) gives prominence to the racial identity of the victim
which shows that s/he takes a fair attitude toward the racial. Thus,
the grammar of clause offers us a useful tool to analyze the im-
plicit way of representation of hegemony situating in a series of
discourses.
However, hegemonic representation as the police’ s representa-
tion of the racial class is formed out of a particular field in a legal
institution or a legal ISA. As mentioned above, social action gets
more and more specialized in the contemporary society and he-
gemony is often organized and in stitutionalized so that discursive
convention has a great effect on discursive hege mony. The more
specialized the field is, the more coercive the hegemonic form
takes. Political leaders often perform coercively through dis-
course in setting agendas, choosing topics in conversation and
representing the world in a conventional ways. Therefore, in the
sense of representation, hegemony implied in language and em-
bedded in social structure can be explained in terms of discursive
convention which is in turn molded in particular field of dis-
course. At the level of language, field of discourse is realized as
transitivity which is in turn realized as clause. On the basis of
these hierarchical elements, a representation model of hegemony
is formulated in Figure 4.
In the process of struggling for discursive hegemony, the
dominant as well as the dominated take a great effort to dissemi-
nate and control the way of representation for distributing their
understanding of the world.
The hegemonic struggle between political forces can be seen
as partly a contention over the claims of their particular visions
and representations of the world to having a universal status
(Butler et al., 2000; cited in Fairclough, 2003: p. 45).
It means that the hegemonic struggle can be exercised through
controlling discursive representation. Additionally, discourse as
representation can be parsed by means of field, and transitivity at
the level of clause. Hereby, it is practical in the sense of theory to
analyze discursive hegemony in the representational model.
Clause (words, etc)
Transitivity (ideational function)
Field (social action, subject matter)
Di sc ourse as repr e sentation (dis cursive convent ion)
Hegemony (social structure, including
family, school, company, economy, politics, culture, etc.)
Figure 4.
The representational model of hegemony.
138

M. LIU
A Case Study
Having discussed above discursive hegemony (manipulation)
and representation, we shall focus our attention on the linguistic
analysis of the political speeches given by President Bush after
11 September event, in order to uncover the mani pulative nature
implied in those speeches, especially his speech of 11 September1
and speech of 20 September Address to a Joint Session of Con-
gress and the American People2.
President Bush made one statement on the day when the at-
tacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon took place on
11 September 2001. And he also made the speech of 20 Septem-
ber. The speeches were broadcast across the world and were
much debated in the following days and weeks. In some sense,
Bush’s speeches after 9/11 are important semiotic events in the
shaping of discur sive meaning and the public’ s responses. As for
the field, Bush’s speech construes the world-view that he repre-
sents, one of which attempts to construct the group of “enemy”.
The process of representation can be seen from the cline of
nominal groups such as Al Qaeda, the Taliban, the enemies of
freedom, and the terrorists. Although the nominal groups fill va-
rious functional roles in process types, most of them take the
grammatical role of Actor in material process clause (e.g. terrorist
attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings; the
terrorists who committed these acts (Bush, 2001a); and enemies
of freedom committed an act of war against our country; the
terrorists practice a fringe form of Islamic extremism…; the lea-
dership of al Qaeda has great influence in Afghanistan and sup-
ports the Taliban regime; the Taliban regime is committing mur-
der; these terrorists kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and
end a way of life; terrorists attacked a symbol of American pros-
perity (Bush, 2001b) ). If using Membership Cat egorization Ana-
lysis (MCA), those nominal groups are classified into “them” as
apposed to “us”. In other words, the category of “them” i s mai nly
defined by means of action or what they have done to “us”. There
are several relational clause, which are used to illustrate the iden-
tities of “them” (e.g. the terrorists are traitors to their own faith;
our enemy is a radical network of terrorists (Bush, 2001b)). As for
other processes, there are very few mental and verbal processes
in Bush’ speeches, which shows that the orator does not care
about what the “enemy” thinks and says. Even though mental
process has been used several times in the speech of 20 Septem-
ber (e.g. the following clauses Americans are asking, why do
they hate us? they hate what we see right here in this chamber-a
democratically elected government; they hate our freedoms),
these clauses construct a fictitious dialogue to represent the inner
experiences of “them”. In a sense, the virtual representation of
inner world fits an implicit proposition, which refers to that peo-
ple performing violent actions towards “us” tend to be in hatred
of “us”. In other words, the relationship between material actions
and inner thought conveyed in the mental clauses has been natu-
ralized in language, which is inclined to be accepted by the public
or audiences.
The outer actions as well as so-called inner actions have been
emphasized and have the function of quickly arousing the pub-
lic’s responses and even hatreds towards “enemies”. In addition,
these actions of enemies are ones that can be typically regarded
as negative. For Bush, the enemy includes not only those who
performed the attacks, but also all those who align themselves
with them and support them, which can be seen from Bush’s
words “from this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor
or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a
hostile regime” (2001b). Those political statements made in po-
litical ISA and thus had much more influential than other political
texts.
Apart from the process type, the circumstantial elements
within the theory of transitivity system deserve to be discussed.
The circumstantial factors include time, place, cause, manner,
comparison, etc. and play key roles in the whole meaning of
process. Bush’s speeches concretely represent time whereas
space is construed in an abstract way (e.g. today, our fellow citi-
zens… (2001a); we will drive them from place to place (2001b)).
The contrast between concrete time and abstract space is promi-
nent in Bush’s texts. On the one hand, specific time greatly im-
presses the public or audie nces that the event is real and military
actions should be taken immediately . On the other hand, abstract
space combines with variety of abstract concepts (e.g. justice,
freedom, terrorism) to universalize a certain perspective or inter-
est. “The contention over the claims of their particular vision and
representation of the world to having a universal status”, accord-
ing to Butler et al., 2000, can be called the hegemonic struggle
between political forces. In other words, President Bush repre-
sents his or the dominant’s under standings of social event which
are disseminated across the globe. The successful universaliza-
tion of such a particular representation to a certain extent depends
on mediation and articulation.
According to SFL, language is able to const rue our experience
of the social world. In Bush’s texts, language functions the role of
manipulating or controlling human behaviors, which has been
analyzed at the language level. In a sense, language is actively
constituting social processes or rearticulating social events.
Conclusion
This paper constructs the re presentational model of hegemony
(manipulation), in terms of field of discourse, transitivity system,
and discourse (as representation), which is practical to uncover
the way of how the disc ursive hegemony exists in the content of
text, and means that discourse may be the representation of do-
minant forces to channel the direction of unde rstanding of social
events. In the sense of representation, hegemony implied in lan-
guage and embedded in social structure can be explained in terms
of discursive convention which is in turn molded in particular
field of discourse. The main reason is that individual and institu-
tional actions are to a great extent oriented by institutions and
regulations, in which social agents do what they are expected to
do or carry out specific discourse.
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Althusser, L. (1971). Ideology and ideological state apparatuses. In L.
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1Statement by the President Bush in His Address to the Nation in 11 Sep-
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