A deepened understanding of resistance in discourse requires that we look beyond both structuralist and agency‐based theories of discourse and power. In support of this argument, the essay first critiques Bourdieu's structuralist and Giddens's agency ‐based theories of power and discourse. It then offers a preliminary sketch of an alternative theory, which is founded on the concept of dueling structures of meaning, oppositional and interdependent in nature, that express social class relations of domination and opposition and provide speaking subjects with the latitude to select (within limits) one structurally generated set of meanings over anot