These two terms contain various possible meanings and can be interpreted in many different ways. Any society has a number of discourses by which it makes sense of the world, the best researcher to study would be Foucault and his theory on discourse. Beleifs and feelings are important in ideologies. Ideology is found within language, texts and representations and also in material institutions and human activities. Ideology is carried in texts outside of us but also ideology is carried internally by all human beings in the world.
Ideology exists in our heads, hearts, subjectivities and even our identities.
Althusser, following on from Marx, suggests that each society has a dominant ideology and this ideology is shared by a majority of the people in society. It is dominant in numerical terms and dominant also in the sense that it tends to support the interests of the dominant ruling groups. Althusser suggested that there is two ways in which people can understand how ideology is transmitted s these views appear to be not in everybodys interests. RSAs - mechanisms that are called into play to force people in conforming to the dominant ideology. RSAs deliberately force, coerce and punish people who try to challenge the system.