Epistemic, emotional, and effective stance strategies for the linguistic articulation of visual critical thinking in interculturally responsive EFL instruction

• Addresses the EFL “articulation gap” by operationalising visual/critical thinking as teachable linguistic stance. • Integrates explicit stance pedagogy, Visual Thinking Routines, and interculturally responsive, justice-oriented teaching. • Models stance through a tripartite lens — epistemic, emotional, and effective. • Introduces two design principles — force calibration and iterative de-centring — to align evidential warrant, affect mobilisation, and ethically oriented action. • Piloted with pre-service teachers (n = 24) via a sample lesson and structured interviews at UCM. • Yields high acceptability (means 4.3–4.8/5) and increased confidence; participants valued clarity, ethical grounding, and multimodal scaffolding. • Identifies actionable refinements (clearer modelling, wider cultural representation, stronger scaffolding) for classroom implementation. • Offers a pedagogy-ready, adaptable approach to develop stance literacy, intercultural competence, and civic-minded classroom discourse. Visual and critical thinking are widely recognised as core competences for the twenty-first century; however, their linguistic realisation — particularly within EFL classrooms — remains insufficiently addressed. This article presents a framework for linguistic stance instruction that enables learners to articulate interpretive and evaluative insights through epistemic, emotional, and effective stance strategies. The framework integrates explicit stance pedagogy with interculturally responsive teaching and Visual Thinking Routines (VTRs), thereby fostering both stance literacy and intercultural competence. Piloted with 24 pre-service EFL teachers at the Complutense University of Madrid, the framework was evaluated through a sample lesson and structured interviews. Participants reported increased confidence in applying stance strategies and valued the framework’s clarity, ethical grounding, and multimodal scaffolding. Ratings across six core components ranged from 4.3 to 4.8. Feedback highlighted the need for clearer modelling, broader cultural representation, and enhanced scaffolding. Overall, the study affirms the framework’s relevance and adaptability for future EFL classrooms.