News

Analyzing Critical Discourse Analysis Research with the Help of AI: Public Lecture by the English Studies Program

08/12/2025 WIB

Friday, November 28, 2025 – The English Language Studies Program of Sanata Dharma University held a public lecture entitled AI-Assisted Research on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in Room 304 of the Graduate Building. Held at 2:00 until 3:30 p.m, the session featured Dr. B.B. Dwijatmoko, M.A. as the speaker.

This public lecture was organized as part of a thesis writing support series by the English Language Studies Program for both undergraduate and graduate students. The event aimed at providing participants with a deeper understanding of core CDA concepts while exploring how AI technology could support their analytical processes in research.

The event drew participants from various universities, including Sanata Dharma University, Respati University of Yogyakarta, STBA LIA Yogyakarta, UPN Veteran Yogyakarta, Sarjanawiyata Tamansiswa University, and Yogyakarta State University. The presence of participants from diverse institutions enriched the discussion and broadened perspectives in understanding CDA practices across different academic contexts.

Explaining the basic concepts of text and various analytical approaches, Dr. Dwijatmoko says a text is anything written or displayed for communication, even if it only consists symbols as the process of producing and understanding symbols involves language. There are various types of text analysis, ranging from text analysis, conversation analysis, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, to narrative analysis. He emphasized Fairclough's three dimensions of text analysis (1989, 1995) to understand a text. Discusing the matrilineal system of Minangkabau, he provided an interesting analysis of the story of Malin Kundang to show how social context gives meaning to a text and compared the story with Mochtar Embut's song "Kasih Ibu."

KBI

Dr. Dwijatmoko also discussed the steps of thematic analysis: familiarizing themselves with the data, generating codes, searching for themes, reviewing themes, defining themes, and writing up the analysis to analysis a text. To support the theme analysis, he proposes the use Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG).

The core of this lecture was the "critical" aspect of CDA. CDA is different from discourse analysis in that CDA does not merely analyze a text but also questions the power and ideology hidden within a text. This is important as language is a strong tool to maintain power.

Dr. Dwijatmoko closed his talk with the hope that more students, both undergraduate and graduate, take CDA in writing their thesis as CDA challenges students to think critically of what is going on around them. Moreover, the advance of artificial intelligence technology offers a great assistance in doing a Critical Discourse Analysis.

 back
Archive