Critical Language Awareness as Future-Oriented Competence

In an age marked by misinformation, discursive overload, and multiple interlinked global crises, language has become the medium through which complex realities are constructed, perceived, and contested. Climate change, democratic erosion, AI disruption, and social inequality are all issues whose urgency is shaped not only by material effects, but by how they are narrated, framed, and made (in)visible through discourse. Yet while language is central to these dynamics, it is often treated as neutral, technical, or peripheral. This Research Topic positions Critical Language Awareness (CLA) as a metacognitive and civic competence urgently needed to navigate these complexities and shape more just and sustainable futures.

This Research Topic invites contributions that explore the role of language and multimodal communication in shaping the crises and possibilities of our time, and that present CLA as a transformative educational and civic practice. Grounded in traditions such as communication studies, critical discourse studies, rhetoric, literacy, sociolinguistics, and ecolinguistics, CLA is here reimagined as more than awareness: it is a catalyst for doing—for enabling agency, advocacy, and activism. The aim is to bridge disciplinary divides, connect theory to practice, and offer frameworks that help integrate CLA into curricula, policy, and public discourse. We welcome theoretical, empirical, pedagogical, and practice-based contributions that address this imperative.

We seek submissions that:

• provide further arguments for CLA as a future-essential competence, beyond language education alone
• highlight CLA’s relevance to sustainability, democracy, AI literacy, and equity
• explore dimensions of CLA (e.g., metalinguistic, ideological, and constitutive awareness)
• showcase pedagogical practices and curricular integration of CLA
• connect CLA to frameworks such as the Inner Development Goals and Education for Sustainable Development
• advance cross-sectoral or interdisciplinary applications of CLA (e.g., in leadership, media, science, civic education)
• address the operationalisation and impact of CLA across educational and societal domains.

We welcome Original Research, Conceptual Analysis, Perspective, and Methods papers from scholars across communication studies, education, applied linguistics, and allied fields.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Registered Report
• Review
• Study Protocol
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: critical literacy studies, critical discourse studies, sociolinguistics, rhetoric, inner-outer transformation, linguistic activism

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.