On Ideology
Abstract
D&Sforum 451 adopted in the first place. Problems are, in other words, ineluctably 'theory- laden', to recall an already overused expression. Conversely, one man's solution may be part of the very problem from another man's perspective. But that leaves us with the following question: if we are always already in the grip of theory, how can we at all hope to influence practice? How can the project of Critical Discourse Analysis hope to make any headway? The answer, I think, is to be found in pondering what Marx failed to realize when he coined his famous battle-cry against conventional philosophy which he felt had contented itself with simply interpreting the world and not trying to change it (Van Dijk, 199 7: 451). In so stating the problem, Marx was unwittingly driving an irretrievable wedge between theory and practice, rather than seeking to find ways of making them dovetail. What Marx failed to notice was nicely summed up by Derek Attridge (1987: 202) when he wrote: 'We may agree that the point, as always, is not to interpret the world but to change it; the problem, however, is that to inter- pret it convincingly is to change it' (emphasis