This review explores the origins and polysemic nature of ideology, offering a historical overview of the concept and its relation to discourse, and the ways they have been theorized. The story of ideology in the study of language cannot be presented without investigating the concept's history in critical discourse studies, linguistic anthropology and pragmatics. Neoliberal ideology, its discursive manifestations, and especially its influence on language use have been taken up by many applied linguists and discourse scholars. And when ideologies are studied, researchers have to define their own ideologies in the process.