Integrating Literary Semantics into ELT: Exploring How Lexical and Contextual Semantics Construct Socio-Economic Meanings

Literary texts offer rich linguistic resources for examining how language constructs social and economic realities, yet their potential for semantic analysis within English Language Teaching remains underexplored. Previous studies on Hawa Panas have primarily emphasized narrative structure and social criticism, leaving a gap in understanding how socio-economic meanings are linguistically encoded and how such analysis can inform language pedagogy. Addressing this gap, the present study investigates how lexical and contextual semantics construct socio economic meanings in the short story Hawa Panas by Silvester Petara Hurint, with particular attention to its relevance for ELT. Employing a qualitative descriptive method, the study analyzes words, phrases, clauses, and narrative excerpts using lexical and contextual semantic approaches. The findings reveal that economic monopoly, unfulfilled political promises, power ambition, and market manipulation are systematically produced through patterned language use that legitimizes domination, marginalization, and inequality. These meanings are unified by the metaphor of “Hawa Panas ,” which functions semantically to represent accumulated social tension and moral decay. The originality of this study lies in its integration of literary semantics with socio economic interpretation and language education, positioning literature as a medium for teaching meaning, ideology, and critical awareness. The study contributes to semantic and literary scholarship by demonstrating how meaning functions as a socially embedded practice shaped by ideology and power relations. It further advances ELT pedagogy by positioning literary semantics as a resource for developing learners’ semantic awareness, critical literacy, and understanding of language as a tool of socio-economic representation.