ABSTRACT
Language supplies the models and categories of thought, and in part people's experience of the world is through language. The categories of language may, like those of ideology, seem to be fixed and given, but both may be subject to constant change. This chapter looks at how a particular individual, Mr Miller, responds to ideological conflicts and problems, arriving at a set of ideas which generate an order of his social world. The ideological conflicts and problems he faces arise out of his social position; he is on a particularly fraught borderline, that between those who can unambiguously be defined as managers and the shop-floor workers. As far as the factory as a whole is concerned, 'middle managers' are in the middle between managers and the shop-floor. Throughout the extract Miller subtly uses pronouns to negotiate his way in this ideological minefield.
