Doing “critical” in a postfeminist era: reviving critical consciousness through peer dialog

Abstract

Critical language awareness (CLA) has aimed to raise critical consciousness in language education about the social aspects of language use, and especially the relationship between language and power, and is considered to play a significant role in enabling learners to participate effectively in democratic citizenship within and beyond the classroom. With a focus on gender representations in the media, I explain CLA's usefulness in the study of gender stereotyping, while also discussing challenges posed to CLA in the emergence of contemporary global postfeminist media representations that are ostensibly pro-women and feminist. Arguing that such postfeminist representations numb critical consciousness and create a climate of post-critique, the article addresses the need to keep open channels of critical dialog about gender and, particularly, about postfeminism. I present a case study of a peer discussion among six female undergraduate students on an online forum in a local university classroom that shows how these students “do” critical mutually and collectively in purportedly (global) postfeminist times.

Keywords:

• gender representations
• postfeminist discourse
• globalization
• media
• critical language awareness
• university classroom

Acknowledgments

I gratefully acknowledge the constructive comments I received from the two anonymous reviewers of this article and from the editors. My thanks to Priscilla for permission to quote from her EL4254 assignment.

Notes

1. See http://www.businessinsider.com/mac-makeup-ad-stars-female-bodybuilders-2013-1.

2. These are pseudonyms of the six students, listed in the order of their posts. All the students were Singaporeans, aged 20 or 21 years. In terms of ethnicity, three students were Chinese, two were Malay, and one is of mixed parentage (Indian-Chinese).

3. Her comment on buying makeup but not using them refers to an earlier passing remark she makes in the post that wearing makeup is “too troublesome for normal days.” That raises another point about the work involved in achieving cosmetically enhanced beauty.

4. Whether and how learners who “do” criticality in educational settings perform it outside the classroom is an important issue (Stevens & Bean, 2007), but which is beyond the scope of the present paper.