AWEJ Volume.5 Number.3, 2014 Pp.330-342
Unearthing a sense of cosmopolitan social justice in Middle Eastern students through an analysis of media language.
Naghmana Ali
American University of Sharjah
United Arab Emirates
Abstract
This paper explores how students’ research exercises on analyzing the language used in media could evoke, through class discussions, a sense of social justice with regards to ontological issues such as human rights and political polarities. Critical Discourse Analysis is epistemologically conceived as a three-dimensional framework in which the first dimension is that of textual analysis, the second dimension examines discourses as conduits of ideology, and finally the third dimension explores social practices as interpretations of hegemonic ideology. In view of the three-dimensional framework, students conduct sociolinguistic discussions based on their research projects and evoke a classroom curriculum that articulates their individual sense of social justice across transnational spaces. This paper is premised on the notion that in this globalized world it is important to inculcate a sense of cosmopolitan social justice in students whereby they can try and understand opposing worldviews from their own cultural vantage point.
Keywords: Critical discourse Analysis, curriculum and instruction, cosmopolitanism, globalization, social justice, human rights