Hashtags and Environmental Literacy in the EFL Classroom

Bibliographic Data

ID21408049
AuthorsDaniel Becker (0009-0008-8315-3729, English Department , WWU Münster , Johannisstraße 12-20, Room ES 310, 48143 Münster , Germany, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume70
Issue4
Pages449-465
Publication date2022-12-16
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueZeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0044-2305 • E-ISSN: 2196-4726
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/zaa-2022-2077
OpenAlexW4310376407
LanguageEN
References cited21

Hashtags have become an omnipresent phenomenon in the digital age. As such, far from simply being indexing devices, they can be perceived as meaning-making practices in their own right, which are involved in shaping contemporary social discourses. This discursive potential of hashtags can, for instance, be seen in current debates about climate change on Instagram and Twitter, where environmentally themed hashtags play an important role in how individuals construct a meaningful relationship to the natural environment. The present paper takes an educational perspective on these environmental hashtags, by taking a closer look at how hashtags can be used in the English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom to foster learners’ environmental literacy. It will be argued that hashtags provide a particularly useful learning foundation in English language education, since they assist learners in developing vital foreign language competences in the form of a response-ability and a discourse-ability and, overall, reveal the cultural construction of knowledge about the environment

Construct (python library) · English as a foreign language · Epistemology · Foreign language · Geography · Literacy · Meaning (existential) · Natural (archaeology) · Pedagogy · Perspective (graphical) · Phenomenon · Sociology · Computer Science · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Literacy, Media, and Education · Psychology · Social Media and Politics

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