Overview
In this important and thought-provoking book, Michael Billig presents a series of major essays which develop and illustrate his rhetorical approach to social psychology.
Billig's position is that everyday thinking, including the holding of opinions, is of its essence both rhetorical and ideological. The very process of thinking is a process of argumentation and debate - with self, with others and with the ideologies inherent in the social stock of commonsense knowledge.
The opening chapters elaborate the theoretical basis and implications of Billig's argument. On the one hand, a rhetorical psychology requires psychologists to address how the wider patterns of society are reflected in the thinking of individuals. On the other, it reveals the significance of a psychological understanding of relations between the individual and society, which should, and can, reject an ultimately unsatisfactory view of individuals as 'unthinking dupes' of the workings of ideology.
The following chapters demonstrate how a rhetorical perspective can be applied empirically. The studies described explore the concept of prejudice, argumentation within the family, commonsense opinions about monarchy and the operations of ideology in both the very ordinary lives of the young right-wing and the extra-ordinary 'rationalities' of fascist propaganda. The final chapter returns to some broader themes of rhetoric and ideology. Billig offers a powerful critique of the current modern and postmodern interest in rhetoric and outlines his alternative vision of the 'argumentative society'.
Ideology and Opinions is essential reading for social psychologists, sociologists and all those interested in investigating both empirically and theoretically the relations between individuals and society.