Critical Language Awareness in Action: Change the World One Story at a Time

Learn how to harness language to build, question and reshape everyday narratives

Explore how narratives we tell shape the way we understand the world and imagine change.

This course shows you how to read texts critically and create more responsible, empowering stories. You’ll explore how grammar, word choice, metaphors, and frames guide interpretation, and develop skills to challenge harmful narratives with ethical alternatives.

Notice language patterns and framing

Learn how pronouns, word choice, and framing can include or exclude, assign responsibility, and shape opinion.

Through practical analysis, you’ll develop skills to spot these patterns in texts, images, and everyday communication.

Analyse stories using critical frameworks

Use critical language awareness to examine how stories support or challenge dominant ideas.

Developing these analytical skills will help you understand not just what is said, but how messaging works to shape understanding.

Create better narratives for change

Reflect on your own role as a communicator and consider the values behind the stories you share. You’ll learn to challenge harmful or unsustainable messaging with alternative narratives that are ethical, clear, and engaging.

By the end, you’ll communicate change in more thoughtful and effective ways that align with your values.

This course is ideal for educators, students, writers, content creators, sustainability professionals, and activists who want to develop critical awareness of the mechanics and impact of language, communication, and storytelling, as well as integrate Critical Language Awareness skills in their teaching, communication, public engagement and advocacy efforts.

This course is ideal for educators, students, writers, content creators, sustainability professionals, and activists who want to develop critical awareness of the mechanics and impact of language, communication, and storytelling, as well as integrate Critical Language Awareness skills in their teaching, communication, public engagement and advocacy efforts.

• Identify the formal and functional properties of language and multimodal communication, specifically pronouns, agentivity and responsibility, and framing.
• Classify the features observed using appropriate metalanguage.
• Investigate how the meaning of the above linguistic features is constructed and with what consequences for their interpretation.
• Interpret values and assumptions that underlie communicative choices, and how these choices shape our social realities.
• Reflect on your own values, positioning, and responsibility as a communicator.
• Practice challenging and transforming harmful communication by offering alternative, ethical, and empowering stories.