Problematising Media Language

“What we have here is theory as a set of instrumental ‘facts’, not as a body of ideas to be used and challenged” (Buckingham 2017). This workshop will outline the ideas of three theorists currently taught in school. I will reflect on my experience of teaching these concepts to undergraduates and ask A-Level and BTEC teachers to comment on their experience. Discussing Barthes, Levi-Strauss and Baudrillard, I aim to show how their ideas can be addressed in a way that is clear for students to understand, while retaining the essential element of all of those thinkers’ position: that the truth and importance of any statement or means of analysis is always constructed, it is not natural or given; not “a set of instrumental facts”. Finally we will discuss the feasibility of supporting students in taking the critical position demanded by these theories, in the context of an assessment structure that requires students to instrumentalise their knowledge.