Investigating power in critical literacy pedagogy to develop critical language awareness

Abstract

Understanding persuasive language that presents certain groups or ideas as superior has become increasingly important in today’s rapidly changing global, technological, and socio-political landscape. People are constantly exposed to texts through education, the media, and institutions, which carry implicit ideologies and power relations. In this context, students need critical abilities that allow them to question how language influences beliefs, normalises dominance, and shapes social realities. However, reading instruction in many Indonesian classrooms still focuses mainly on literal understanding, providing few opportunities for students to develop critical language awareness. This gap underscores the need for critical literacy as a teaching approach that explicitly links language use to power and sociocultural contexts. Addressing this need, the present study examines how critical literacy pedagogy, grounded in the Four Dimensions Model, supports higher education students in recognising and analysing power relations embedded in texts. The study draws on a classroom-based critical literacy intervention, using artefact analysis and classroom observations to examine students’ engagement with texts through Lewison lens. The finding indicates that students moved beyond surface-level reading to identify identity construction, silenced voices, conflicting perspectives, dominant norms, and counter-narratives. Building on these findings, the study proposes a pedagogical framework that integrates text familiarisation, critical questioning, multimodal resources, authentic materials, and critical discourse analysis. Therefore, the implications of this approach underscore the necessity of fostering critical literacy to cultivate awareness and expose underlying power relations in contemporary global contexts