Ideology in positivist research articles on issues of teaching English as a foreign language

Abstract

Abstract The research articles(RAs) as the dominant genre of academic writing can be accounted as the sites of reproduction of unequal power relations and dominance. Through critical discourse analysis of epistemological and ontological underpinnings and subsequently methodological aims and values of positivist paradigm as social structures, this article aims to foreground power and ideology stricken latent aspects of empiricist RAs. Research as a social practice mediates between the social structures and the RAs as social events. Textual analysis of practical arguments presented mostly in the pedagogical implications part revealed that the scientific world views manifest themselves as the premises of these arguments. The premises can provide reasons for actions (Searle’s,2010, social ontology theory). The reasons can signify the empiricist interests as the global concerns. They exclude the rival paradigms or ways of understanding the world. These world views maintain the dominance of Western societies on global academic and social discourses.