Innovation in Language Learning

Political discourse plays a significant role in constructing social identities, ideological boundaries, and representations of national belonging. Examining how these meanings are produced through language also offers opportunities for developing learners’ critical engagement with authentic texts. This study investigates how selected political actors construct ideological polarization in press briefings from 2025, focusing on immigration, elections and democracy. Drawing on van Dijk’s (2006) socio-cognitive approach to Critical Discourse Analysis, the textual analysis examines lexicalization, actor representation, presupposition, and attribution of responsibilty. It explores how these discursive strategies contribute to the construction of in-groups and out-groups, leading to broader ideological assumptions and socially shared beliefs. Building on the findings, the study will develop and implement a CDA-informed instructional intervention for advanced Iraqi university-level English as a Foreign Language learners. Selected extracts from the analyzed texts will be transformed into inquiry-based classroom activities in which students identify linguistic strategies, examine implicit assumptions, compare representations of social actors, and justify their interpretations through textual evidence. A classroom-based research design will examine students’ performance before and after the intervention, supplemented by qualitative analysis of their written responses, to explore changes in critical language awareness and critical thinking. The study’s interdisciplinary contribution lies in connecting socio-cognitive discourse analysis with evidence-informed language pedagogy while retaining the systematic analysis of political discourse as its central research component. By translating CDA findings into structured learning activities, the study aims to demonstrate how authentic political texts can support critical reading, ideological awareness, and evidence-based interpretation in EFL education, with particular relevance to the Iraqi university context.

[1] van Dijk, T. A. (2006). Politics, ideology, and discourse. In K. Brown (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics (2nd ed., pp. 728–740). Elsevier. van Dijk, T. A. (2006). Discourse, context and cognition. Discourse Studies, 8(1), 159–177. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445606059565

 

[2] Hashemi, M. R., & Ghanizadeh, A. (2012). Critical discourse analysis and critical thinking: An experimental study in an EFL context. System, 40(1), 37–47. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2012.01.009

 

[3] Samsi, Y. S., Lukmana, I., & Sudana, D. (2020). Teaching critical discourse analysis of sociocognitive approach to EFL learners through corpus-based analysis. ELT in Focus, 3(1), 37–45. https://doi.org/10.35706/eltinfc.v3i1.3760