Exploring Pragmatic Strategies in English Media Discourse on Energy: A Scoping Review

This scoping review examines pragmatic and linguistic strategies employed in English-language media discourse on renewable energy in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with implications for critical media literacy. A corpus of 450 media articles published between 2022 and 2024 was analyzed using a pragmatic framework focusing on speech acts, modality, hedging, stance markers, and framing strategies. Quantitative findings reveal that declaratives constitute 68% of evaluative statements, interrogatives 12%, and directives 20%. Epistemic modal expressions appear in 35% of predictions concerning renewable energy outcomes, while deontic modals account for 42% of prescriptive statements. Hedging devices are identified in 18% of evaluative claims, functioning to mitigate epistemic commitment. Positive stance markers are present in 54% of the articles, compared to 21% for negative stance markers. Qualitative analysis further demonstrates that media texts deploy face-saving strategies and nationalist discourse framing to construct renewable energy as both a civic obligation and a national strategic vision. The findings highlight how pragmatic language choices shape ideological positioning and public attitudes in media narratives. This scoping review contributes to the growing field of media discourse analysis and offers practical implications for integrating authentic media texts into language teaching curricula, developing learners' pragmatic competence, and fostering critical discourse awareness among university learners in Saudi and Arab academic contexts.