section_path: Ideology and the social sciences/Semiotic theory
section_name: Semiotic theory
paragraph_text: Semiotic theory
  
  According to semiotician Bob Hodge:
  
  identifies a unitary object that incorporates complex sets of meanings with the social agents and processes that produced them. No other term captures this object as well as 'ideology'. Foucault 's ' episteme ' is too narrow and abstract, not social enough. His 'discourse', popular because it covers some of ideology's terrain with less baggage, is too confined to verbal systems. ' Worldview ' is too metaphysical, ' propaganda ' too loaded. Despite or because of its contradictions, 'ideology' still plays a key role in semiotics oriented to social, political life.
  
  Authors such as Michael Freeden have also recently incorporated a semantic analysis to the study of ideologies.