Fostering criticality and autonomy through discourse analysis in EAP

This paper aims to explore how critical thinking and autonomy in EAP can be developed through discourse analysis. EAP will be understood as a form of Academic Literacy (Lea and Street) in which language is considered to be a purposeful, dialogic, identity-building social practice that requires reference to context in order to be used responsibly. Contexts, such as those belonging to discipline-specific academic communities, will be explored in order to decode the meaning and purpose of specific written texts and help learners recognise writer stance. Some affordances and constraints of using discourse analysis in the EAP classroom will be highlighted by referring to specific examples in which texts are approached as genres (Swales 1990) requiring a systemic functional analysis (Halliday 1994).
I shall conclude that if the goal of teaching EAP is to develop Academic Literacy, then a pedagogy which is based on discourse analysis should be encouraged.