Critical Perspective on Language Teaching to Establish Indonesian Society that Have Critical Language Awareness

Abstract

This paper aims to provide an alternative paradigm of language teaching which is expected to form the students to have a critical language awareness. Indonesian society is still dealing with the dominance of various public discourse that does not enlighten the public. After consuming the dominant discourse generated by Soeharto's New Order regime within 32 years, the people of Indonesia are still faced with many viewpoints tend not to enlighten are produced by the mass media editors, genders activists, political elites, advertising producers, and religious leaders. People are increasingly confused and even frustrated at not being able to understand well the various public discourse. There are no rights and obligations in generating and interpreting public discourse. Consumers are especially disadvantaged in the various public communications. This condition should be the concern of education, particularly language teaching. Students should be taught critical perspective from an early age so that they are sensitive to the use of language that seem innocent, but actually oppressive. Unfortunately, the conditions that have not been addressed properly by the designer of Indonesian language teaching (ILT). ILT in the curriculum 1984, 1994, and 2006 using a communicative approach that aims to achieve the student's ability to communicate through four language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The ILT is still not able to produce students or people who have a critical language awareness, as a condition to form a civil society. Students are no longer sensitive to the details in respect of the use of language in communication: effectiveness, politeness, ideology, and power. Therefore, there must be a paradigm shift in language teaching, the prioritization of critical perspectives in developing the language curriculum to achieve emancipation. It is suitable for a nation-state that had experienced a very long colonization by other nations, in this case, Indonesia. The spirit of this emancipation can be tracked on the Frankfurt school of sociology, systemic functional linguistics, and critical linguistics or critical discourse studies. Since the beginning of the student should be introduced and naturalized to the role and function of language as a semiotic instrument in shaping human culture.