ABSTRACT
Departures from theories of dominant ideology appear in a number of sources, most notably in Abercrombie et al., whose challenge1 was to the common belief that the dominant economic class ‘set the dominant values of society ... to win the consent of subordinates’ (Abercrombie, et al., 1980, xv). Since this intervention, a less inflected model of ideology has gradually appeared. The proponents of this position nevertheless acknowledge that, in abandoning theories of dominance, they may be accused of reducing the critical purpose of the entire notion (Price, 1997; van Dijk, 1998). This development is particularly relevant to studies of political discourse, if political messages are understood to represent manifestations of ‘belief’.
