Women’s Voices for Justice: A Van Dijkian Critical Discourse Analysis of the August–September DPR Protests

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-563-8_18How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Critical Discourse Analysis; Sociocognitive; Women’s Voice; Protest; DPR

Abstract

As a gender historically perceived as secondary within the social hierarchy, women have been socially constructed as polite and gentle, with implicit rules governing how they may speak in order to remain within the bounds of femininity. By contrast, men have generally enjoyed greater freedom in language use and in expressing strong emotions. However, the civil demonstrations and nonviolent resistance of August against DPR decisions revealed that women have become political voices, articulating public emotions and demanding justice. This moment gave rise to hashtags such as #BravePink, recognising women’s courage in confronting state apparatus, and shareable Instagram story templates that glorified female protesters with the label rakyat jelita, a phrase that reframed femininity as a sweet but defiant symbol of resistance. Figures such as Abigail Limuria, Afutami, and Salsa Erwina Hutagalung exemplify how contemporary Indonesian women are no longer passive recipients of authority but active agents in contesting injustice. To examine this shift, the study employs Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) informed by Teun A. van Dijk’s sociocognitive theory of language and power, analyzing digital protest discourse including hashtags, Instagram stories, and public statements from female influencers. The analysis highlights how women’s resistance is articulated, constructed, and disseminated in digital public spaces, and how it differs from men’s modes of expression. Findings show that women’s voices in these protests are marked by greater force and boldness, with strong, non-euphemistic lexicon (“fuck,” “death of empathy,” “death of humanity,” “killer,” “arrogant”) as well as personal reflection and testimony that reframe resistance in more inclusive and collective ways.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Endang Soelistiyowati
AU  - Andri Handayani
AU  - Erlin Estiana Yuanti
AU  - Alya Shalsabillah Febri Kusmulyadi
AU  - Fredella Geralda End
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/04/28
TI  - Women’s Voices for Justice: A Van Dijkian Critical Discourse Analysis of the August–September DPR Protests
BT  - Proceedings of the 4th International Conference of Research on Language 2025 (IROLE 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 228
EP  - 239
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-563-8_18
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-563-8_18
ID  - Soelistiyowati2026
ER  -