ABSTRACT

This chapter argues that being aware of how language conventions and language practices are invested with unequal relations of power and ideological processes should form part of any educational programme. Awareness of the power of language has to be taught explicitly. This teaching has become established within the school curriculum as language awareness or critical literacy. A critical approach to language awareness implies an understanding of the relationships of power encoded in language. It is a challenge for teachers who frequently have to work within prescribed curricula with prescribed texts and inflexible examination systems that often rely on abstract and formalist views of language. Students have to learn to contextualize texts in alternative ways and to apply the metalevel awareness of how the language is being used. Learners must be able to contextualize a text in terms which are obvious before they can be expected to reframe it in alternative terms.