Social Constructionist and Ideological view of discourse.

Looking at both of these approaches to analyzing discourse, I can't really see much of a different.  I mean, I understand the Ideologists' (Berlin and his posse) critique of the Social Constructionists (Kuhn, Bruffee).  It does seem like they view knowledge as a completely democratic construction, which is built from equal contributions of agents within the discourse community.  Of course knowledge is not necessarily formed this way in discourse community.  Some agents or agencies (in this case a group of agents in a discourse) have more power than other and control the group ideology.  But then also, that assumes that the people do not have the ability to sperepate themselves (emotionally, physically, cognitively) from that discourse and pursue another that is more favorable to that agent.  But then what keeps people in a discourse that does not make them happy or that they have no control over?

I think the formation of the Bible may provide an interesting example.  The Bible, when first collected, was controlled by a few people (clergy of the Catholic Church).  Now this story is about the Catholic relationship with the Bible.  The Bible has history well before the Catholic church, however, similar stories have been played out around this text.  

The clergy was able to control the Bible because it was only written in Latin.  The masses (not a pun) did not speak Latin (particularly the poor majority).  A promise of salvation from Earthly plight was a easy deal for those who suffered in the streets and fields of feudal Europe.  Access to such knowledge came through the clergy, who got if from the Bible, which was written in Latin, which was only understood by the educated minority.  People were "persuaded" to stay in the discourse that they did not control.  

Then came Martin Luther.   And the advent of the Bible written in a language of the people who read it.  Events like this saw the birth of alliterative discourses with a different, more democratic power structure since most of the agents were on the same level in their previous discourse.  This is where it gets interesting to study the means of production as well since this came with the inventing of the printing press.

So, it seems there is always some sense of power at work in discourse, but the distribution of the power may vary.