Ideology can be described as an interested discourse. Thus, a nation's ideology is a form of discourse which presents itself simply as a shorthand for an extensive range of discourses in time and space, or, it can be viewed as a particular set of effects within discourses. A nation's ideology, hence, includes a particular discourse on property, a treatise on international and domestic jurisprudence and a way of talking about progress. Such hostile dispositions are expressions of contesting forms of identity. As such they are part of the process of reproduction and transformation of material culture.
Representation creates an additional insertion in the British text.
It can be argued, and often is, that the discursive representation of reality in Britain is an integral part of the relations that are present in the international arena. The process of discursive representation is infrequently a neutral detached one. It is structurally imbued with the interest and authority of the namers and makers of British reality - ie predominantly scholars, journalists, businessmen and politicians caught within the discourse of social class formations in the capitalist grand narrative. We are constantly reminded that there is disagreement amongst Cultural Studies scholars as to whether one can speak of descriptions, images or representations of Britain as either approximate or not. Where agreement does exist however is on the idea that representation retains a site of meandering meaning, but a horizontally shifting meaning autonomous from discourse.