ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the current crisis in critical pedagogy which we describe as an inability to move beyond a language of critique and domination. It examines the relation of language to the formation of subjectivity and praxis and tries to persuade the reader that the choice of language we make as educators in describing, interpreting, and analyzing social reality is a crucial factor in educational and social change. The chapter focuses on how language works to socially construct and mediate reality, and how language interacts with experience to shape subjectivity, to the current debate among critical educators regarding whether or not the language of radical educational theory is too abstruse and impractical. It outlines provisional elements of a critical pedagogy for classroom use that offers the potential for helping to create an active, critical citizenry of learners in the current age of postmodern media knowledges.
