Teaching Critical Discourse Analysis in English and French

The present paper studies the importance of teaching Critical Discourse Analysis, and the challenges of teaching the same subject both in English and in French. Following the proposal of a comparative analysis of the US President’s, Donald Trump, as well as the French President’s, Emmanuel Macron, inauguration speeches, the need to find a common critical approach is compulsory. As discourse analysis draws students to the investigation of socially-situated texts, the research focuses on the students’ engagement in the study of social interaction, context dependency, meaning in context and manipulation which derives from the comparative analysis of the two speeches. The present paper observes the students’ implication in the investigation of different types of manipulation, according to Van Dijk’s theories, as well as their understanding of the symbolic function of language in social life so as to acquire practical skills in the construction and interpretation of social relationships