© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved.
Teaching ‘with an attitude’: Critical Discourse Analysis in EFL teaching
Josep M. Cots is a lecturer at the University of Lleida (Catalonia, Spain), where he teaches English language and applied linguistics. He has been involved in EFL pre-service and in-service teacher training in Catalonia for 15 years. He earned his PhD from the University of Barcelona in 1991 and has published mainly in the area of applied discourse analysis and pragmatics in language teaching and learning
Email: jmcots{at}dal.udl.es
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) sees discourse as a form of ‘social practice’, in which language use is seen at the same time as socially influenced and influential. Another characteristic of CDA is that it is engaged and committed; it intervenes in social practice and attempts to reveal connections between language use, power, and ideology. The critical approach to language study is consistent with a view of education which prioritizes the development of the learners' capacities to examine and judge the world carefully and, if necessary, to change it. Nevertheless, these views of language and education respectively are all too often absent from foreign language programmes. The main principles and notions of CDA are introduced in this article, and specific proposals are made for incorporating them into a foreign language programme.