Teaching Power Construction in EFL Classes through Tweets: A Discourse Analytic Based Study

Abstract

Communicative approaches and methods are still found to be inadequate in addressing the pedagogical issues of EFL learners. In developing countries, there is a dire need for EFL teachers to make the students understand and deconstruct ideologies embedded in the English language. The study sets out to define and explore the ways and dimensions of Critical Discourse Analysis that will assist EFL teachers to reveal and teach power constructions embedded in language. This study focuses on The Ideological Square Model of CDA proposed by Van Dijk (2000). Following a mixed-method approach, twenty tweets of Donald Trump are selected through random sampling dated from 27th May to 5th October 2020. The analysis reveals that Trump’s tweets expose polarization, use of pronouns (54% in-group pronouns, and 46% Out-group pronoun) emphasize positive In-Group representation. These ways expose the stances of extreme power use, criticism, and discriminatory attitude towards Out-Group and reveal that the centralizations of all authorities are entitled to In-Group that holds the status quo. The research implies that EFL learners will be better able to aware of ideological constructions of language by the CDA in teaching. This study can be expanded by adopting CDA as a teaching tool in EFL classes, which can be used to expose and deconstruct many other ideologies like, Feminism, Racism, and Marxism etc. that are rooted in language.