ABSTRACT
Suspicion of authoritarian address is common amongst critical analysts, but similar misgivings seem to exist concerning everyday speech and exchange. Deacon and his associates, for example, seem to represent this position, when they argue that the analyst must ‘stand back and investigate ... the common-sense basis of the ways we communicate with each other and the ways the media communicate with their audiences’ (Deacon, et al, 1999, 150). These two examples, the interpersonal and the mediated, are run together to suggest that some form of general ‘hegemony’ is at work, applying both to interpersonal and mediated discourse.
