ideologeme

English

Etymology

ideology +‎ -eme

Noun

ideologeme (plural ideologemes)

1. (sociology) A fundamental unit of ideology.
   • 1981, Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act:

     So we will show in what follows that Frye's entire discussion of romance turns on a presupposition—the ethical axis of good and evil—which needs to be historically problematized in its turn, and which will prove to be an ideologeme that articulates a social and historical contradiction.

   • 1995, Mikhail Epstein, After the Future: The Paradoxes of Postmodernism and Contemporary Russian Culture:

     It is not sufficient, however, only to identify ideologemes as a special category of language units. We must also analyze and systematize relationships between ideologemes in order to discover a model that gives rise to varied ideological uses of language.

Related terms

• ideologemic