This text presents language as discourse and some of the implications of such view to education in the contemporary world. The analysis of the contemporary world made here starts from its characterization as the locus of a middle class in a process of globalization and digitalization, and focuses on a post-structuralist view of discourse as the basis for critical literacy. From such basis, then, the text proceeds to a discussion of the implications of critical literacy to the social role attributed to foreign languages in the world today, seen mainly from the perspective of a so-called "virtual transculturality".
critical literacy; citizenship; foreign languages