Abstract
Critical literacy in EFL context has been examined from different perspectives. However, there is limited empirical evidence of how news critical literacy is examined discursively among college EFL learners. By deploying a Projection profile from Systemic Functional Linguistics, this paper contributes to the written evaluation of college EFL learners’ news critical literacy. The data consisted of 236 news critiques from two cohorts of Chinese EFL learners. The results show that college EFL learners in China are more subjected to the projection of locution and subjective-implicit projection in news critiques, presenting similar choices about projection grammar but reverse orientations in news criticizing context. Moreover, Chinese EFL learners are adept in projecting function for iconic sequencing of information, text sharpening, message retrospecting, and co-textual reasoning, manifesting a critical awareness in functional literacy of news discourse. Various projections also place Chinese EFL learners into a cline of discursive identities among projectors, speakers and discoursal community members, which indicates that Chinese EFL learners are disengaged in discerning news information and passive on news values and social context. The findings implicate that a projection-based trinocular lens is a discursively effective approach for delimiting Chinese EFL learners’ news critical literacy while corroborating that discursive technology, contextual orientation and critical awareness are crucial elements in news critical literacy. Pedagogical implications for news literacy education and media communication toward EFL learners are also discussed.
Plain language summary
This study looks at how students in China who are learning English delve into and criticize news stories. While many researchers have looked at how students learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) think critically, not much has been done to see students’ news reading habit. This paper uses a language analysis called the “Projection profile,” which falls under the broader profile of Systemic Functional Linguistics, to see how good these students are at evaluating news. The researchers looked at 236 written critiques of news stories made by two different groups of Chinese students learning English. They found that these students often quote what others say (locutions) and suggest their personal opinions in a similar manner. Yet, Chinese students show inconsistent uses of certain language patterns when they evaluate different English news and tend to have different opinions about the news. Chinese students learning English are good at using language to arrange information in a clear order, make their points more convincing, think back on the message, and use the co-text to support their reasoning. The use of different ways to incorporate other people’s words and ideas also shows a range of identities in their comments, both for the person doing the actual speaking and for the people being spoken about. The conclusions of this paper suggest that looking at news critiques from three different angles can be a useful way to see how language functions when students critique news. It also supports the idea that language in news isn’t just neutral but can shape how people think and learn. This could be a helpful reference for teaching students about news literacy and how to interact with media in an educational setting where English is not their first language.
Introduction
News is information that informs and empowers citizens to participate in civil society and democratic processes (Downie & Kaiser, 2007), serving as the citizens’ window for the public affairs of the world (Patterson, 2007). However, news is also claimed to be a constructed representation of the realities of daily life (Tully et al., 2020), which may be highly coded (Kellner & Share, 2005; Fowler, 2013) and impact people’s knowledge, beliefs, values, social relations and social identities. Against this dilemma, news literacy encourages a reflective, questioning stance toward the forms and content of news in a post-truth period (Wallace, 1992) and produces learners as particular kinds of human subjects (Janks, 2010, 2013; Fowler, 2013).
In news discourse, English newspapers and magazine articles are not only important English news sources but also valuable instructional resources for Chinese English as foreign language(EFL) learners long before China’s entry into WTO, whereby unpacking the relationship between word and world remains pivotal to enhance both their English functional literacy and news critical literacy (Fairclough, 2010; Luke, 2018; Bednarek & Caple, 2017). Nowadays Chinese EFL learners have already exceeded 390 million (Wei & Su, 2012) and the number of English learners/users in China is on the rise (Wei & Gao, 2022). At present, however, little elaborate or systematic research on English news education and its possible influences on Chinese college students has yet been done empirically (Xin, 2000; Weng, 2023), whilst young people “fail to see” quite a lot (Swart, 2023). Besides, news discourse is typically characterized by projections which, as a prominent logico-semantic resources, are charged with more extensive meaning-making potentials (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014), playing a mediating role in the successful dissemination of news values in of news values in the press.
Thus, the current study contributes to investigating how Chinese EFL learners criticize English news based on a profile of projection while checking whether projection can be used as an effective framework to examine EFL learners’ news critical literacy.
Literature Review
Approached widely from Freirean approach, feminism, post-structuralism, discourse analysis, as well as cultural and media studies, news critical literacy stays in a competitive status quo with critical information literacy, critical media literacy and conventional literacy. While the importance of critical literacy in language learning is increasingly recognized, research specifically focusing on news critical literacy within the EFL context remains limited to areas such as discourse analytic approaches, critical pedagogy, and news media communication.
Discourse Analytic Studies of EFL learners’ news critical literacy
Discourse approach to news critical literacy focuses on the interactive relationships among news realities, news discourse and its potential readers, of which extant emphatics are mainly put on the dialogism of news discourse, ideological construction, and news evidentiality (Xin, 2007; Richardson, 2017; Zhang & Gai, 2022).
In the classroom, the training of critical literacy is integrated into students’ educational assignments, wherein they are assessed in accordance with their language proficiency and their text (Behrman, 2006). Learners are found resisted by constructing a counter-story in the face of local media with coded language and visual images (Kohnen & Lacy, 2018), and exhibited critical responses by questioning the hidden worldviews and power relations in textbook discourse and printed texts (Huang, 2011a). Nevertheless, studies of critical literacy also reveal various practical challenges facing learners. For example, EFL students are found lack of deeper understanding and critical exploration of the sociocultural issues present in the written texts (Park, 2011). Additionally, the learners tended to accept authors’ opinions and representations without questioning them (Kaura & Sidhub, 2013). Even being able to identify features of a particular genre, the learners could not critically interrogate the authors’ underlying rationale for constructing the text in that way, nor elaborate how certain discursive elements perpetuate inequality (Weninger & Kan, 2013).
Critical Pedagogical Studies of EFL Learners’ News Critical Literacy
In critical pedagogy, critical literacy emerges as a kind of social practice in tandem with functional literacies or conventional literacy in the EFL context (Huh, 2016; Huang, 2011b; Izadinia & Abednia, 2010; Kim, 2012; Ko, 2013; Ko & Wang, 2009; Weng, 2023; Wolk, 2003). However, no fixed practical models for critical literacy instruction are ever conventionalized in EFL context (Huang, 2012; Huh, 2016), such as the Four Resources model (Luke, 2014), the interdependent framework (Janks, 2010, 2013) concerning power, identity, access, and design, and the Critical Literacy-Based Reading Instructional (CLBRI) Model (Rizqiani, 2024).
In the exploration of instructional approach to news critical literacy, Zaini (2022) introduces the approach of ambivalence as a way of reading texts critically and points out that participants’ ambivalence is associated with their identities and subjectivities, being actively engaging with the texts. Huh (2016) suggests balancing skill-based and critical literacies in classroom. Ko (2013) argues that English proficiency does not hinder EFL learners’ critical literacy practices, but English proficiency levels do affect their views on critical literacy learning. The higher-level learners tended to focus on careful analysis of the text itself, whereas the lower-level peers focused on the social and cultural contexts of the text (Ko & Wang, 2013).
Moreover, approaches to news literacy education are also developed to strengthen its operationality, inclusiveness and access (Loh et al., 2023; Melo-Pfeifer & Gertz, 2022). Huang (2011b) develops multiple perspectives on the same issue to expand students’ critical literacy. Johnston (2020) confirms that high school students were able to recognize legitimate news sources versus opinion, but they often failed to recognize bias associated with political or organization affiliations. Tseng (2024) has found that critical literacy classes helped to provide alternative ways for indigenous students to view the world and discern norms and “silenced voices” in EFL textbooks. In addition, engaging in discussions about politically salient picture books contributed to connecting themes with English language learners’ personal experiences and socio-political contexts (Kuo, 2013).
Media Communication Approach to EFL Learners’ News Critical Literacy
In media communication, news critical literacy is multi-faceted, explored with more diverse manners and foci, covering critical thinking, intercultural competence, news consumption and evaluation, and factors influencing readers’ access to news. Substantive emphatics among relevant studies are concerned with the role of critical news literacy in adolescent’s or young learners’ predicting skills, information sources tracking, evaluation of news trustworthiness and sharing, as well as making sense of real-life news or fake news (Ku et al., 2019; Leeder, 2019). Studies show that news is often seen in the eyes of adolescents as boring, repetitive, negative, and disconnected from youth (Tamboer et al., 2022). Young people were found not confident about spotting fake news online and may rarely or never check the source of news stories (Notley & Dezuanni, 2019). Students’ evaluation of news was related to their abilities to source news and evaluate texts and images (Nygren & Guath, 2022). Thus, news literacy plays an important role in shaping perceptions of information shared online (Vraga & Tully, 2021).
In general, news critical literacy is vital to EFL learners in a post-truth era which involves gaining the skills and knowledge to read, interpret, and produce certain types of texts and artifacts, and to gain the intellectual tools and capacities to fully participate in one’s culture and society (Kellner & Share, 2005), though it lacks a conventionalized definition. To EFL learners, news critical literacy is a vital meaning-making of their recognition of discourse world, social culture, and ideological values.
Relevant Projection Studies
In Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), projection is a clause-complexing representation of various experiential phenomena, a semiotic processing of the second-order facts (Halliday & Matthiessen,1999). For example, in the sentence he yelled he would not go, the projecting clause is ‘he yelled” at the first-order semiotic reality, whereas the projected clause is “he would not go” at the second-order reality. The notion of projection is, so to speak, distinctive in that it is a semantically covering category to encapsulate all meaning-making choices in relation to the first-order reality.
Recently, related studies of projection have investigated the discursive patterns and types of projection, its semogenic mechanisms, syntactic semantic features (Zeng & Liang, 2012), grammatical functions (Forey, 2009; Moore, 2002), as well as the features and functions of projections in interlingual and multimodal discourses (Nakane, 2017). Among them, interpersonal projection as a discourse strategy is found to be significantly associated with a higher willingness to communicate, as manifested in lengthier and more complex student answers (Yang & Yin, 2022). Similarly, as for writers or speakers, the more unequal the relationship between the author and writer remains in projection, the higher the writer’s chances of using paratactic projection seem (De Oliveira & Pagano, 2006). In addition, L2 learners use more projection than their L1 cohort but are not sophisticated in utilizing appraisal resources in projection (Zhou & Liu, 2014) though projection can make writings more scientific and persuasive while framing viewpoints and allowing writers to define themselves (Forey, 2009; Hood, 2010). “The choice is significant, communicating information about the speakers and their attitudes toward hearers, topics, contexts and so on” (Brown & Herndl, 1986, p. 23).
Summary
Critical literacy approaches view language, texts and their discourse structures as principal means for representing and reshaping possible worlds (Luke, 2014). However, news critical literacy among EFL learners studies is under-explored with discrete essentials (Downey, 2016; Jones-Jang et al., 2021), which gives rise to plethora of hybrid critical frameworks for classroom practice. A normative analysis between contents, designs, shapes, features of texts and their consequences in material and social contexts (Luke, 2018) will be the key to fostering critical literacy as a socially semiotic practice whereby a close interrelation can be found among news word, news world and learners’ critical performance.
On the other hand, projections are presented to function in personalities, textual styles and negotiations as well as objectivity of science. Studies to date have not attached due importance to the mutual link between essentials of news critical literacy and projection potentials, which may be complicated by power relation, ideological stance, discourse recognition, self-expression and cultural convergence. Moreover, a sound theoretical framework between critical literacy and projections has not yet been come up with in discourse analytic approach or critical pedagogy, particularly in EFL context. “An analysis of writers who use projecting clauses and the types of projecting clauses accessible to them in relation to their status would be very interesting” (Forey, 2009:169).
This study, thus, intends to explore the distinctive feature of using projections in Chinese EFL learners’ news critiques and further their news critical literacy shown by a projection lens. To be specific, this study is mainly to address the following two questions. Question One focuses on the unique characteristics of Chinese EFL learners’ projection types, which serve as a foundational premise for Question Two.
(1) What are the projecting features presented by Chinese EFL learners in English news critiques?
(2) How is Chinese EFL learners’ news critical literacy in accordance with their use of projection?
A Trinocular Projection Profile for News Critical Literacy
Since critical literacy is defined in present studies with different essentials, this study, following Halliday (2015), intends to regard literacy as a way of discursive meaning-making beyond reading and writing. An SFL approach to critical literacy is to focus on “redistributive” justice rather than “recognitive” justice (Luke, 2014), which is able to foster a set of metalanguage for news critical performance.
SFL considers language as a resource for meaning-making interfacing with different strata, that is, the stratum of social context beyond language comprising context of culture and context of situation, and the semantic, lexicogrammatical, and phonological stratum within language (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014). The inter-stratal relation among different strata is characterized, from a trinocular perspective, by realization, while inside each stratum, instantiation encapsulates the relation between system as potential and instance as text.
In the contextual stratum, the field serves as a registerial parameter constructed by participants, processes of events, tempo-spatial circumstances, as well as their experiential and logical relations, where projection construing the logico-semantics realizes the complex relations within the ideational semantic system actualized by the registerial parameter of field. Since social identity, as Hasan (1978) points out, reflects the power and obligation of an identity carrier and is often determined by the specific field where a verbal interaction takes place, the semantic system of projection is concerned likewise with the construal and construction of the social identity of the interactants in the projecting context, so it participates into construing the different projected identities of the language users through its textual instantiations, as shown in the following figure (Figure 1).
A trinocular projection profile for literacy.
From a trinocular perspective, the relation between language and social context encapsulates realization and instantiation (Halliday & Martin, 1993) in a hierarchical manner. As suggested in Figure 1, the semantic system of projection is subjected to the semantic stratum within the language, realized by the corresponding lexicogrammatical system at the lower stratum; projection plays different projecting functions in its instantiated discourses and involves the actualization of different projected identities in the context of a situation. As a logical-semantic resource, projection is the meaning-making between clauses embodying different projecting functions and corresponding to choices of projected identities in discourses. Thus, in projection, a relationship of realization unfolds layer by layer in a top-down sequence from its social identity, discoursal function, and semantic system to its lexicogrammatical wording. A particular lexicogrammatical system realizes a particular semantic system, which is in turn instantiated as a particular projecting function and further realizes a particular projected identity in the field of a context of situation. It can be seen that identities are not just reflected but are constructed actively, continuously, and dynamically throughout the discourse (Benwell & Stokoe, 2006). In other words, projection as a subsystem in verbal interaction is constructed by actualized instances and involved in different strata.
Different from a tri-dimensional CDA model to identify the potential factors of critical literacy influencing recognitive justice (Fairclough, 2010), or a combinatorial approach of socio-cognition and meta-function for explicating susceptibility of mis-and-disinformation (Mažeikienė &Vaičiūnienė, 2021), the present hierarchical profile of projection undergoes a semiotic processing of speaker and different projecting symbolizers. The projection grammar of experiential phenomena involves the process of semiotic construal itself and the participants. Therefore, different projection types are pivotal to examining resources for realizing and defining different elements of news critical literacy and ideological positions in specific communicative events.
In a word, the substantive uniqueness of the projection profile is to present a hierarchical grid analysis over elements of news critical literacy in the EFL context, balancing “self”-focused and “text”-focused approaches. Within the domain of news consumption, news critical literacy depends on the language in use under any specific context of situation. In this sense, news critical literacy is naturally represented as a kind of discursive participation in news consumption dependent on various projection types and discursively evaluated on the whole relative to projected identities, projecting meaning potential and projection lexicogrammar.
Data and Methods
Corpus Introduction
Newspapers and magazines are particularly useful in starting and sustaining critical conversations for their discursive possibility of developing various cultural and personal interpretations (Leland & Harste, 2004) and enable learners to build on and question their cultural meanings and uses of literacy with their cultural assumptions and experiences (Park, 2011). The material of this study is collected over 16 weeks from one assignment task in the Newspaper Reading course undertaken by English majors and non-English majors at a university in China. The learners are different in their disciplinary and educational backgrounds and are at generally correspondent English level in accordance with their performance of National College English Test Band 4 (CET4). Each English learner is to randomly select the news topic from well-known English newspapers, such as New York Times and The Guardian, and compose a written assignment task without time limits during the whole second semester of their freshman year. The assignment task consists of body, background information and critique section. This study selects only the written critique section of the English learners’ writings, which includes 429 samples from English majors and 537 ones from non-English majors, each extending from 150 to 500 words.
Following an approach of random sampling, this study selects three pieces of news critiques from each learner’s for the balance of the corpus, and finally builds up a corpus of news critiques of English majors named as CCEM, and a corpus of non-English majors named as CCNEM. CCEM contains 117 texts, with 19,302 word tokens and 3,437 word types; CCNEM has 119 texts, with 23,791 tokens and 3,653 types. As Flowerdew (2004) argues, from a methodological point of view, a small-scale specialized corpus is more advantageous than a large-scale corpus because it can reflect specific communicative contexts in more details.
Annotating Method of Projection Types
To fully examine the meaning-making system of projection language (Liang, 2015), this study extends its orientation of projection in accordance with the tri-pairing parameters of dependence and independence, explicitness and implicitness, as well as objectivity and subjectivity of projecting contexts.
Specifically, based on the pre-existing classification of projection and in line with three pairs of orientation parameters, this study argues that ideational projection and interpersonal projection lie on a continuum within the projection context where the former is constitutive in essence to the projecting context and projector-oriented, while the latter is ancillary to the projecting context and oriented toward the speaker. Accordingly, ideational projection is divided into three sub-types, namely projection of locution, projection of idea, and projection of fact, whereas interpersonal projection, according to the above-mentioned three pairs of parameters, is divided into four subtypes, among which subjective explicit projection and objective explicit projection are context-independent, whereas subjective implicit projections and objective implicit projections are context-dependent. The seven projection subtypes constitute the projective context in the form of a continuum as shown below (Figure 2):
A cline of projections.
As can be seen from the above figure, projection is the creation of the second-order content of reality. The more apparent the speaker is reflected in a projection, the less context-dependent the projection is, and vice versa. Based on the above classification, this study further re-established the annotating framework of the projection system as follows (Figure 3).
An annotation framework for projection types.
In line with the above systematic annotation framework, this study manually concordances the corpora by a group with the help of the UAM Corpus tool 3.3 m. For the pilot annotation, 30 pieces of news discourse were distributed to a five-member team, with whom the uncertain projection instances would be negotiated and judged together. The following criteria are met in the annotating process: ideational projections is annotated by the structure of third-person subject, including impersonal subject, and verbal/mental process, whereas interpersonal projections are determined both by first-person subject, including second-person subject and verbal/mental process structure. In addition, modal adjuncts and verbs are ascribed into implicit projection types since they semantically equal their congruent clausal form in SFL sense. For instance, the following example (1) is interpersonal projection of objective explicit type in terms of its bold part, whereas example (2) is ideational projection for its third-person subject, rather than interpersonal subjective explicit projection; Example (3) is subjective implicit interpersonal projection for maybe equals its clausal form I think in SFL.
Examples:
(1) Some people thinkit is precisely because of the development of modern technology. (interpersonal projection of objective explicit type)
(2) She usually thinksDonald Trump as a star more than a president. (ideational projection)
(3) Maybeyou will say that is art, but I just see the power of savage desire. (interpersonal projection of subjective implicit type)
In cases like she may usually thinkit is necessary to take measures to strengthen local safety, teammates would negotiate whether it is an interpersonal projection of implicit subjective type according to may or an ideational projection of idea according to the entire bold part of this case. After pilot annotation, the CCEM and CCNEM were coded by two teammates and coding results were cross-checked through face-to-face negotiations. Disagreements would be resolved in light of previous annotations and co-textual context. The data—the frequency scores of ideational projection and interpersonal projection—were analyzed statistically using non-parametric models (e.g., Chi-square test).
Findings
Chinese EFL Learners’ Projection Types Toward News Critical Literacy
As shown in the Figure 4, various projecting forms are deployed by Chinese EFL learners in their critiques of English news, presenting a similar trend of variation. The deployment of ideational projections close to the context-independent end shows a gradual decline in the CCEM and CCNEM. By contrast, the types of interpersonal projection closer to the context-dependent end show a fluctuating variation, which shows that Chinese EFL learners are able to use various projection resources to present their ideas and questions as Park (2011) confirmed.
Types and frequency of projections in Chinese EFL news critiques.
In both corpora, Locution type accounts for the most frequent of ideational projections, whereas Fact type accounts for the least but with diverse projecting forms as shown in Figure 5. Similarly, within interpersonal projection, subjective-implicit projection counts to be the most frequent with limited projecting forms in both groups, which indicates that Chinese EFL learners’ general orientation of projection deployment is restricted by the content of the news discourses in that the projection of locutions biased toward context-independence is to deploy the original wording for representing the news discourse directly, whereas the less context-independent projection of ideas is to restate the original content of meaning.
Projection types and projecting forms in Chinese EFL news critiques.
Besides, significant differences are found among the deployed sub-types of ideational projection and interpersonal projection, as shown below in Table 1.
The Types and Frequency of Projections in CCEM and CCNEM.
Notes. df = 1.
p < .05.
Ideational projection is significantly less deployed than interpersonal projection in CCEM (χ2 = 6.0557; df = 1, P = .014; r = 0.0559), where the former is more characteristically context-independent. Meanwhile, objective-implicit projection is closer to the dependent end of news context and is more frequently deployed (χ2 = 5.7571; P = .016; df = 1; r = 0.0545), whereas projection of locution is significantly less deployed (χ2 = 4.6144; P = .032; df = 1; r = 0.0488) in CCEM. The result suggests that English-majors are more inclined to demonstrate their self-authority through interpersonal projection toward the news context-dependent end of the continuum, highlighting their blunt identity as speakers but paying little attention to the self-evident verbal authority about what they criticize. In other words, “students generally show a weak critical literacy when reading news” (Li, 2020, p. 84), who are projected as a speaker short of critical or grammatical awareness in that projection of locutions, as a meta-phenomenon of the spoken wording in sourced news, is closer to the context-independent end of the projecting context than that of ideas. Conversely, Chinese non-English majors are more inclined to present their viewpoints and evidence through the less context-independent ideational projection, which may indicate their relatively superior critical and grammatical awareness.
Chinese EFL Learners’ Projecting Functions Toward News Critical Literacy
Regarding the discursive function of projection, the different textual choices of ideational and interpersonal projections produce different texture for unfolding news word and world.
As shown in Table 2, projections are made for four main discursive functions by Chinese EFL learners. The bold parts in example (4) are the projection of ideas (they think that), the objective implicit projection (in their opinion), and the projection of locutions (other people argue that), which are naturally made as the source of message through integrating thematic function with projection. Since the Theme is the psychological subject of any clause, it is the starting point of the message (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014). The projecting clause in the clause complex naturally corresponds to the iconicity of information processing to the extent that the sequence between the psychological subject and cognitive events is consistent with that of the news sequence. That is why most of projections, especially the ideational projection, are naturally deployed by English learners.
Textual Function of Various Projections.
Projection is also deployed for contrastive negotiation and text sharpening as shown in example (5). The bold part in example (5) is the type of ideational projection consisting of two projections of ideas and one of fact. The first two use people as the projector in the projecting clause, while projector in the next clause complex is concealed in the thematic position of the factual projecting clause. The first two projections disguise the speaker’s stance with the public addressee people, staying in a consensus with the implicit subjective negotiation of to be honest; the subsequent projection of fact highlights the new information that focuses on the performance and the achievement, so that a contrastive negotiation of theme is made in example (5) to sharpen the news information in effect.
Thirdly, projections engage in the entirely hierarchical progression of Hyper-Theme and Hyper-New in the discourse whereby the textual choice of hyper-theme is subjected to message retrospected by three instances of projection of locutions as hyper-new as shown in (6). The three instances of projection of locution in (6) reflect the hierarchical progression of hyper-theme in the entire text which, as the driving source of hierarchical progression, constructs a local environment for news flow where projection of locutions participates. The quoting nature in the projection of locutions prioritizes the existence of a preceding referent, which can be referred to anaphorically in specific situations (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014). Thus, the news flow departed from the hyper-theme has been maintained in the paratactic and hypotactic projections of locutions. In this way, projections of locutions retain the basic contextual features of the projecting context of news while reflecting the hierarchical retrospecting of message potential co-textually.
Projection of fact often serves to present specific objective information; they are also deployed by EFL learners to make discursive reasoning in a co-text, as shown in example (7) where the learner chooses the extended projections of facts for the co-textual reasoning. The factual nouns embody the potential of being further modified while enacting its semantic projection. It can also reflect the classification or evaluation of the discursive antecedent and function as discursive references for anaphora or cataphora. Thus, learners deploy projections of fact to accomplish their discursive reasoning, clarify the experiential taxonomy of relevant news facts and arrange the logico-semantic sequential relations in different clausal complexes.
Chinese EFL Learners’ Projected Identity Toward News Critical Literacy
Projection is, in fact, a semiotic representation of the second-order content. Projection of ideas is projector-based in projecting context, constitutive, and context-independent, while interpersonal projection is speaker-based, ancillary to projecting context and context-dependent. Both projections are placed into a continuum where a distributive cline of projected identities of different learners may be positioned with reference to the discoursal identity, social identity, and participatory identity in discourse. That is, learners project themselves as a certain type of personae and the identity they project is closely related to the activities they attempt to accomplish, as shown in Table 3.
The Cline of Chinese English Learners’ Projecting Identities.
It can be seen that Chinese English majors show a preference for the speaker’s identity in their significant deployment of interpersonal projections in CCEM, whereas non-English majors are more inclined to the projector’s identity in CCNEM, highlighting their natural choice for the ideational projections associating with their prior state of knowledge. To be specific, ideational projections are semiotic facts of inner experience and projector-oriented constitutive language; fact projections, nevertheless as a subtype of ideational projections, are not experiential but logico-semantic in nature. Therefore, different types of ideational projection may manifest four kinds of learners’ identities, that is, the projection of fact constructs an identity of discursive community; a non-intersubjective projection of ideas reflects the identity of an omniscient narrator as a projector, whereas an intersubjective projection of ideas reflects an affiliated identity of an individual speaker as participant or the bonding identity between speakers and projectors as participants. By contrast, interpersonal projection is speaker-oriented and serves as an auxiliary language. It uses the speaker to show her prominent status as a discursive participant. Subjective explicit interpersonal projections reflect the explicit identity of a participant as speaker, while subjective implicit projections reflect the implicit identity of a participant as speaker; objective implicit projections realize the affiliated identity of the speaker in the discursive community, while objective explicit projections show the bonding identity of the speaker in the discursive community.
Discussion
As seen above, news critical literacy is concerned with meaning-making or reflection literacy as Hasan (1996) enlists. While literacy is a technological construct of discourse, “to be literate is not only to participate in the discourse of an information society, it is also to resist it, to defend oneself—and others—against the anti-democratic technologizing of that discourse” (Halliday, 2015, p. 230).
In this study, news critical literacy is examined contextually, semantically and lexicogrammatically as projecting discourse acts with a trinocular lens in SFLer’s sense. Lexicogrammatically, Chinese EFL learners show a preference for projection of locutions and subjective implicit projection to present their literate evidence against news values, manifesting a self-evident authority while constructing a second-order phenomenon closer to the projecting context. The findings reflect that Chinese EFL learners are inactively participating into the verbally constructed world of news within a local context. That is, the learners are found more faithful to the sourced news for reflection and criticism, and more likely to focus on words and sayings in news rather than news world. Moreover, the study shows that though learners prefer to deploy “other” counter-story in face of foreign media with coded language and visual images (Kohnen & Lacy, 2018), they are with inadequate critical awareness to some extent, lack self-confidence in news reality, and avoid the risk of self-responsibility.
Secondly, students’ evaluation of news was related to their abilities to source news, evaluate texts and images (Nygren & Guath, 2022). In news critical education, discursive subjectivity seems to be promoted among Chinese EFL learners, with a focus on implicitly-represented lexicogrammatical resources (Li, 2020), but Chinese EFL learners intend to commune with a localized member of news community without strong self-defending intentions just as most adolescents or young adults do (Tamboer et al., 2022). Since projection of facts and objective explicit projection, sharpening resources for critical authority, are insufficiently deployed by Chinese EFL learners, it is indicated that Chinese EFL learners lack of metalanguage awareness of highlighting their projecting authority. Thus, news critical literacy is interrelated with knowledge about language (KAL) (Martin, 2009) and discursive technology for deploying such projection grammar.
Furthermore, in terms of learners’ professional experiences, both Chinese English-majors and non-English majors display semantical adeptness in various textual functions through ideationally or interpersonally semantic projections. But they manifest reverse orientations toward projecting context, with the former being more dependent on the situational context of the news discourse and the latter more independent away from it. Ko and Wang (2013) argues that the higher-level learners tended to focus on careful analysis of the text itself, whereas the lower-level peers focused on the social and cultural contexts of the text. Chinese EFL learners’ reverse orientations toward projecting context indicate their contrastive differences in disengaging news content. For Non-English majors, their critical recognition of news discursive realities may stay at a low level of participation as they present more communicative undertakings about socially constructed news facts, indicating their disengagement in news idea and a take-it-for-granted performance in face of news values. By contrast, English majors are more participative in discursively constructed news information by presenting a more literate gaze with a more personal standpoint; but they are insufficient with an extensive self-defense as seen globally. Thus, news critical literacy requires both in-depth recognitions of news word and world far beyond the contextual stratum and self-defending news values.
As for the specific type of projector identities, Chinese EFL learners prefer a bonding identity between the speaker and the projector, that is, the lexicogrammatical construction of the intersubjective projection of locutions. However, they are incapable of corroborating other identities, especially the identity of a discursive community with authoritative status. Regarding the salience of the speaker’s identity, these learners are more subjected to the subjective implicit speaker’s identity and less favorable for the bonding identity of the discursive community as seen through their low commitment to the objective explicit projections. The finding testifies that Chinese learners tend to criticize English news depending on the news’s discursive context instead of its social context (Forey, 2009; Zhou & Liu, 2014). Their critical literacy concerns the individual self, lacking an objective and authoritative awareness of the news discoursal community. They present a mild critical disposition in news critiques (Li, 2020).
Implications and Conclusion
Based on a trinocular projecting profile of SFL, this study examined Chinese EFL learners’ news critical literacy in their news written critiques and corroborated that discursive technology, contextual orientation and critical awareness are crucial elements in news critical literacy, which contributes to EFL English learners’ news education and consumption as well as English news dissemination.
A trinocular perspective of projection in the case of Chinese EFL learners justifies news critical literacy examined hierarchically through discursive communication within discourse, sociocultural context beyond discourse, and discursive technology about discourse, which could delimit literacy as a meaning-making network. By doing so, some suggestions for news education may be raised.
Firstly, a critical approach to language and literacy education requires the setting of culturally appropriate and generative contexts for enactment of identity and solidarity (Kubota & Lin, 2009). Accordingly, a projection-based approach place news materials as prioritized contextually to EFL learners’ news critical literacy. For English majors among EFL learners, news materials should be more extensive to foster a wider registerial range while following a discursive route to deconstruct news values and content in EFL classroom. As for the non-English majors, news materials should be selected in accordance with learners’ prior personal news knowledge to strengthen learners’ news contextual recognition. Moreover, news critical literacy may be educated with a tri-dimensional awareness (i.e., critical awareness for news content, defensive awareness for personal value, and metalanguage awareness for discursive understanding) in combination with recognitions of news voice, stance and perspectives in a hierarchical manner.
Secondly, since linguistic and ideological processes do not exist as distinct phenomena, but one and the same in substantial terms (Kress, 2003), an SFL-based projection analysis of news discourse would be an important protocol in class for fostering discursive understanding, critical awareness examination and personal value self-defending. Accordingly, instructors might develop a counter-text approach for news critical literacy in light of the projection dimensions. Besides, the activity of news critiquing in class could be a favorable discursive practice to observe the literacy essentials shown in projection profiles, since “the understanding developed through critique is essential in the practices of design” (Kress, 2010, p. 6) and discursive meaning-making is able to shed light on the literacy gap in news critiques and communication by EFL learners. In so doing, projection, characterizing discursive reflections with logico-semantics, would be an effective appliable lens for discursively examining news critical literacy in general.
Footnotes
Statement of Contribution
The author confirms that the manuscript has been read and approved by all named authors and that there are no other persons who satisfied the criteria for authorship but are not listed.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Ethics Statement
This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors.
Data Availability Statement
The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are available from the author on reasonable request.