RafaelFajardo

Voloshinov argues that the sign is, through and through, ideological in character.

“A sign does not simply exist as part of reality – it reflects and refracts another reality. Therefore it may distort the reality or be true to it, or may perceive it from a special point of view, and so forth. Every sign is subject to criteria of ideological evaluation, (i.e. whether is is true, false, correct, fair, good, etc.). The domain of ideology coincides with the domain of signs. They equate with one another. Wherever a sign is present, ideology is present too. *Everything ideological possesses semiotic value*.”

It follows from this, that if everything ideological has semiotic value, then the consent of human consciousness is wholly semiotic, governed by laws of semiotic communication. Thus at the very outset idealist and positivist or physiological approaches to social consciousness are ruled out.

“Signs emerge, after all, only in the process of interaction between one individual consciousness and another. And the individual consciousness itself is filled with signs. Consciousness becomes consciousness only once it has been filled with ideological (semiotic) content, consequently, only in the process of social interaction.”

The sign, then, is the vehicle of social communication and permeates the individual consciousness. It is through signs that the individual consciousness and the external environment mutually interpenetrate. Individual consciousness only becomes so in the material of signs. consequently, consciousness itself is a socio-ideological fact. Indeed, no boundary can be drawn between consciousness and ideology for they share the same material of signs.