Critical Discourse Analysis of Students’ Academic Speeches: Power, Ideology, and Identity in Higher Education
Kata Kunci:
Critical Discourse Analysis, Academic Speeches, Student Identity, Power and Ideology, Higher EducationAbstrak
This study examines students’ academic speeches through the lens of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to explore how spoken academic discourse functions as a site of power, ideology, and identity construction in higher education. Employing a qualitative research design, the study analyzes academic speeches produced by university students in formal academic contexts, such as seminar and thesis proposal presentations. The data were collected through audio and video recordings and transcribed verbatim. Fairclough’s three-dimensional CDA framework was used to analyze the data at the levels of textual features, discursive practice, and social practice. The findings reveal that students’ academic speeches are characterized by distinct discursive patterns, including the strategic use of authoritative and tentative language, reliance on established academic authorities, and adherence to institutional genre conventions. These linguistic choices reflect the reproduction of dominant academic ideologies such as objectivity, impersonality, and hierarchical knowledge production. At the same time, students negotiate legitimacy and credibility by balancing compliance with limited critical engagement, constructing academic identities as legitimate yet subordinate members of the academic community. The study contributes theoretically by extending the application of CDA to spoken academic discourse produced by students, an area that has received less attention than written academic texts. Pedagogically, the findings highlight the importance of integrating critical academic speaking skills and critical language awareness into higher education to empower students in navigating academic power relations.
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