Critical Discourse Analysis of Horror-Comedy Interdiscursivity: Linguistic Demystification of Javanese Myths in Sekawan Limo (2024)

Abstract

Employing Norman Fairclough's three-dimensional Critical Discourse Analysis, this study examines how the East Javanese Arekan dialect linguistically demystifies spiritual fear in the horror-comedy film Sekawan Limo (2024). Prior sociolinguistic research has largely confined Javanese speech variation to reflections of feudal hierarchy, overlooking how regional dialects are deployed by youth to negotiate mysticism in the digital era. Existing studies on this specific film have likewise mapped its illocutionary speech acts and code-mixing patterns, but none has traced how its dialect performs the demystification of mystical hegemony across textual, industrial, and sociocultural dimensions at once. The objective of this study is to deconstruct how discursive friction between urban rationality and traditional mysticism is linguistically negotiated across the textual, discursive-practice, and social-practice dimensions of this framework. Using a qualitative descriptive design, dialogue fragments in the Arekan dialect were collected through structured observation and orthographic transcription, then analysed at all three levels of the framework. Findings show that the film's terrifying atmosphere is dismantled by the egalitarian, profane properties of Arekan, where wordplay and localized swearing (pisuhan) function as sociopragmatic catharsis. At the discursive-practice level, the film's oscillation between mythic-horror and profane-comedy registers textually instantiates an interdiscursive strategy, whose commercial reception is reflected in strong theatrical and streaming performance. Socioculturally, the film reflects an epistemological shift among urban Gen Z and Millennials, who reframe ancestral myths not as coercive dogma but as an intertextual space renegotiated through modern rationality and liberating laughter.