8 - Conclusion: ideology and British race relations

Summary

The purposes of my conclusion are to emphasise once more what I see to be some of the salient features of British racial discourse, to restate in a more concise way some of the main arguments presented in earlier chapters, to point out what I believe to be the weaknesses in my account, and to indicate the directions in which the subject might be developed.

‘Ideology’ has been chosen here as the pivotal concept on which to study discourse about race. This has the immediate effect of limiting the area under examination, for not all discourse – interpersonal communication on a given subject – need be treated as ideological. Focus on the concept of ideology has the prime effect of highlighting the social and political context in which discourse takes place and of producing questions and providing answers in terms of people's social patterns and of the interests that arise from their social positions. With an awareness of the various connotations of ‘ideology’, particularly of ideology as a major integrated justificatory system helping to support or undermine social practices, dialogue between audiences need not be judged solely in terms of its content, but in terms of its congruity or incongruity when assessed against a backcloth of practical relations. The comparisons of discourse with action, or of one group's discourse with another, provide a method for explaining discoursive content in terms of the differing social, political, and economic circumstances of the actor.