Eagleton, 2007) that come out of a broad spectrum where the term ideology has been understood as a way to determine the thought patterns ingrained in a society as those meanings that come from a rather narrow society where ideas are established for the purpose of maintaining the ruling class.
Van Dijk (1998) ascertains that "ideologies are the foundation of the social beliefs shared by a social group" (p. 49). This socio-cognitive perspective of ideology establishes that ideologies are constructed in group members' minds. It also establishes that social beliefs organize, determine, and control the opinions of a group; these beliefs reflect what is considered as true or false, correct or incorrect, and good or bad in a society. Van Dijk ascertains that "beliefs may be constructed, stored, reactivated, organized in larger units, and such processes take place in the accomplishment of all cognitive tasks" (p. 21). Aspects of life such as worries, fantasies or fears may also be beliefs. This research study evokes in its data analysis this concept of beliefs given that pre-service social studies teachers are expressing their beliefs toward one topic or another in conjunction with EFL learning.
The second perspective of ideology presented in this study is based on Eagleton's theory (2007). He claims that ideology "is a matter of 'discourse' rather than of 'language'" (p. 223). Ideology "represents the points where power impacts upon certain utterances and inscribes itself tacitly within them" (p. 223). The concept of ideology tries to unveil the struggle between an utterance and its concrete conditions in order to achieve goals. These conditions to make accomplishments are considered as the struggle of power to maintain and reproduce social life. In this sense, Eagleton argues that "ideology is less a matter of the inherent linguistic properties of a pronouncement than a question of who is saying what to whom for what purposes" (p. 10). This approach of ideology determines that the relationships between subjects and social objectivity are complex and those relations are mediated by discourses.
Finally, the third perspective of ideology considered here is developed from McLaren (2003), who defines it as
the production and representation of ideas, values, and beliefs and the manner in which they are expressed and lived out by both individual and groups. Simply put, ideology refers to the production of sense and meaning. It can be described as a way of viewing the world, a complex of ideas, various types of social practices, rituals, and representations that we tend to accept as natural and as common sense. (p. 205)
Society is organized around different social practices and rituals that generate a feeling of belonging. People who share these feelings tend to accept social rules without restrictions. Consequently, "ideology is the result of the intersection of meaning and power in the social world" (McLaren, 2003, p. 205).
Considering previous definitions of ideology, I would like to propose my own. Ideology is the platform of ideas, values, and beliefs from which people build meaning of the world and the ways they employ to enact and live according to that platform. In other words, it is what makes meaning for people and how they act out based on their way of thinking. Certainly, ideology deals with the tension existing in power—to empower and disempower people and there are many different levels of each one of these conditions. That is to say, each group of people that shares or defends its particular ideas has a particular ideology.
Construction of Meaning
According to Wells (1995), the construction of meaning can be described in three characteristics. The first is that "meanings are made, not found" (p. 237). This characteristic involves the interdependence between these states
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