Language as Ideology

Critical Linguistics, inaugurated in 1979 with the publication of Language as Ideology, has been widely influential and successful in documenting the connection of linguistic and social practices. Published as a second edition in 1993, the reissue of this classic text still provides a most detailed theoretical account of the operation of power and ideology in all aspects of text. The book presents the advances made in the field of critical language study. The authors’ views on the necessary directions for the field are advanced through a detailed analysis and theoretical discussion of a related set of texts. The book will be of interest to students and teachers of a wide range of disciplines, including English language and linguistics, media, cultural and communication studies, and education.

Gunther Kress (1940–2019) was a world leading linguistic and semiotic theorist, notably in the fields of critical discourse analysis, social semiotics and multimodality. Language, learning and literacy were central themes throughout his work including the development of a new, social semiotic theory of learning. Gunther was a Professor of Semiotics and Education in the School of Culture, Communication and Media, UCL Institute of Education, UK. He previously held positions at several other universities notably East Anglia (UEA) and University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). Gunther was an insightful and highly original scholar. He authored many ground-breaking publications including Social Semiotics (with Bob Hodge), Early Spelling, Learning to Write, Reading Images (with Theo van Leeuwen), Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication, and Multimodality, Learning and Communication (with Jeff Bezemer).