Critical Discourse Analysis of Indonesian Sports Journalism: A Linguistic Examination of Football Development Narratives in TVOne News
Keywords:
critical discourse analysis, sports journalism, Indonesian language, metaphor, ideology, national identityAbstract
This study investigates how Indonesian sports journalism constructs ideological narratives surrounding
football development and national identity through critical discourse analysis. Focusing on the 2024
TVOne News article “Saatnya Menata Sepak Bola Kita” (“Time to Reorganize Our Football”), the
research explores how linguistic and rhetorical choices reflect broader sociocultural and political
meanings embedded in media discourse. The study aims to uncover how metaphorical language,
modality, stance-taking, and intertextual references work together to frame football reform as a
discourse of national renewal and collective responsibility. Employing Fairclough’s three-dimensional
framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the analysis examines textual features (lexical
selection, grammatical patterning, cohesion), discursive practices (production, distribution,
consumption), and the sociocultural contexts that shape interpretation. The data; comprising the
complete three-page, 1,847-word article were systematically coded to identify ideological indicators
such as organic metaphors, pronoun use, evaluative language, and argumentative structures. The
findings reveal that the text employs organic metaphors (e.g., roots, soil, ecosystem) to portray football
as a living entity requiring nurturing and patience, while first-person plural pronouns (“kita”, “we”)
construct a sense of national unity and moral obligation. Modality and evaluative expressions articulate
both critique and aspiration, positioning the journalist as a civic mediator between policy discourse and
public sentiment. Through this rhetorical configuration, the article transforms sports reporting into a
site of ideological negotiation, intertwining emotional resonance with logical argumentation. The study
contributes to sports communication and media linguistics by demonstrating how CDA can reveal the
ideological functions of language in sports journalism, showing how linguistic strategies contribute to
nation-building, policy critique, and collective identity formation within Indonesian media.
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