A Political Discourse Analysis of the Speeches of President Obama and Prime Minister Gillani

This paper examines the discourse of the two political speeches made by the Pakistan Premier Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani and the US President Barack Obama after the elimination of Osama Bin Laden on May 3, 2011. The objective of this analysis is to discover and explicate how ideology is established and unveiled by the use of language. For the stated purpose, the framework of this study draws on Halliday’s model of transitivity (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004) through which we aim to investigate the transitivity choices employed by the individual speakers, the participant roles (Hasan, 1985) assigned to the enemy and the pronoun choices (Butt et. al., 2004) made by the two speakers in order to reveal a particular socio-political stance disseminated through the two speeches in two cultures: of the USA and Pakistan. The findings indicate that linguistic choices in transitivity play a fundamental role in conveying of implicit and dominant ideologies

Reporting Conflict: Appraising Journalists’ Voice in Pakistani Newspaper Discourse

This paper aims at evaluating journalist voice in the Pakistani print media discourse. Journalists are supposed to make valuefree reporting, but the analysis of  newspaper texts shows that the journalists appraise and the news reports voice newspapers’ stance  (Bednarek, 2006). Therefore, media discourses always present a particular left or rightwing stance loaded with subjective evaluations (White and Thompson, 2008). While previous studies have focused on reportage phenomena of different news genres and perspective comparisons with a primary focus on language in the context of politics for an ideology, this paper explores evaluative patterns - based on the appraisal framework (Martin and White, 2005) of discourse analysis developed within Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2014) with a focus on appraisal domains of attitude, engagement and graduation - in Pakistani news reporting to find a reporter voice. The analysis shows that the said news reporting is not value free

Relational Practice in Multilingual Peer Discourse: Talk as a Marker of Gender Identity

This paper examines relational practice in multilingual peer discourse to inspect the distinct identity patterns of the male and the female participants involved in gender dynamics. There is  a growing impetus of discourse studies as an emerging area of sociolinguistic and ethno methodological research. In this paper, talk as a marker of gender identity is explored in the light of the theoretical framework suggested by Holmes (2006) who studies the different relational strategies of male and female interlocutors in workplace environment. In the current study, conversations of six male and female postgraduate students of English language at Sargodha University, Pakistan are recorded and transcribed to see how the participants create team as a relational practice using gender specific norms via talk. The study has found that the males create team through humor in discourse while females tilt towards small talk and frequent verbal gestures of approval. Moreover, masculinities and femininities of the peers are manifested in their style and function of the conversations. The study is significant because it is going to lay a foundation for the study and exploration of gender integrated conversations in multilingual context in Pakistani English and other varieties spoken in casual talk in Pakistan

War against Terror Impacts on Pakistan’s Economy: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Pakistani Newspapers

The present research is an attempt to explore the discourses of political cartoons published in Pakistani Urdu and English newspapers representing the war against terror impacts on Pakistan’s economy. Newspapers’ linguistic and semiotic representations of war against terror impacts on Pakistan’s economy are ideologically loaded and employed in the construction and deconstruction of the realities of post 9/11 scenario in a desired way. The research uses multimodal critical discourse approach (Machin, 2007) along with Van Leeuwen’s framework for recontextualisation (2008) and Fairclough’s (2003) framework for visual and linguistic analyses of the political cartoons to explore the hidden ideologies. The visual and linguistic analyses of the political cartoons pay careful attention to how discourses are chosen and then represented visually and linguistically to promote particular interests and ideologies that shape public perception of the reality

Exploring the Construal of Cultural Hybridity in the Maps for Lost Lovers: A Discourse Stylistics Study

This study undertakes an analysis of hybrid discourse with the help of discourse stylistics, an approach to the study of literary texts which combines findings from the fields of discourse analysis, conversation analysis and pragmatics. The analysis aims at highlighting how the cultural hybridity which exists in characters is manifested by the linguistic organization of the exchange as interactive process. The study based on cultural hybridity in hybrid discourse shows that the characters ignore their respective position while interaction because both children and parents treat each other as equal sometimes by scorning, criticizing, satirizing, questioning and sometimes by manipulation to foreground their hybrid culture

Exploring the Portrayal of Female Voice in ‘Heer Ranjha’: A Gender-Based Study

The present study aims at explicating the theme of love in the folk tale Heer Ranjha through the discourse stylistics perspective. To do this, Fairclough (2015) model is employed with a focus on lexical choices. The metaphors used in the dialogues portraying the theme of love have been carefully selected, and further the linguistic pattern employed has been significantly discussed to highlight the embedded theme of love as a dominant human emotion in folk tales. The study also aims at providing a richer, more complex and enlightened canvas of feminist theory highlighting the role of women and power relations between the two sexes. The data comprises on twenty passages from the translation of ‘Heer Ranjha’ by Usborne (1973) where the translator claims to have translated the epilogue at full length while the rest of the poem has been condensed without omitting anything significantly important to the theme. The study throws light on the language of the folk tale, which reflects socio-cultural features such as the patriarchic family structure of the time through the language choices. The flute, a bamboo musical instrument, is a metaphor of love in a dream-like romantic sound. Finally, this paper helps to develop a better understanding of folktales in a particular socio-cultural background

I am what I am: Exploring the identity construal in Pakistani School EFL Textbooks

This paper aims at exploring how identity is construed in children’s literature and how the powerful legitimize to identify the textbook consumers by exercising their influence. Drawing on Systemic-functional Linguistics (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2014), particularly Genre theory (Martin and Rose, 2008), it examines how English language textbooks used in Pakistan are written to construe, a project, and normalize a particular sociocultural identity. The sociocultural positioning being projected through the textbooks can be norm-conforming, contesting or can suggest otherwise. The majority of the students in Pakistan are mandated to learn state governed textbooks which serve them build up a sociopolitical identity. Therefore, underlying semiotic modalities realizing a perspective are pertinent to be explored in order to unfold discursive strategies for constructing identity. It is widely acknowledged that any educational curriculum is the most effective tool to construct and circulate a reality. Therefore, challenging any literacy pedagogy embedding particular outcomes can help transforming educational practices across the school curriculum (Martin and Rose, 2012). The data comprises Punjab English textbooks for the government schools. The findings suggest that the intriguing intricacies of textbook discourses can be successfully examined through analyzing linguistic patterns and that the textbooks construe sociocultural identity. The findings also provide insightful implications for discourse analysis based on SFL by contributing explorations of identity

Comparing the Meaning Potential in Shakespeare and Manto through Speech Acts: A Discourse Pragmatic Study

This paper attempts to explain the application of speech act theory (John Searle, 1976) on the soliloquies expressed by Hamlet and Keshulal Singh. The descriptive focus of this study is to draw attention to the felicity conditions whether they are being fulfilled by the speakers while making an utterance or not. Content analysis based on speech act theory is used for this paper. It has been pointed out that declaratives are less while directives are more applicable on these soliloquies, with the help of analysis. Hamlet and Keshulal’s inner self is being depicted through their speeches and it is analyzed that they are so much upset and are in the situation of to be or not to be that they do not know what should be their strategies, in taking their revenge. In actuality, they are trying to extinguish the storm which is bursting inside them through their soliloquies but by comparing the inner devastation of both characters. It is highlighted that Hamlet’s soliloquies are more self-explanatory than that of Keshulal because Hamlet makes vows, questions, deplores, and challenges the circumstances more than the Keshulal

Appraising Environmental Beauty of Northern Areas of Pakistan through Rhetoric Expressions in Uzma Aslam Khan’s Thinner Than Skin: An Ecolinguistic Perspective

Environmental study is rising as a hot topic nowadays and there is a striking awareness of sustaining asymmetry between man and nature. How individuals ponder human relationships with the earth and other living creatures have changed deliberately. Ecolinguistics is a sub-field of sociolinguistics that studies the role of language in connecting human beings and their natural environment. Therefore, this research investigates the use of rhetorical expressions by Anglophone author Uzma Aslam Khan and her characters Nadir, Farhana, and Maryam and their attitudes, graduation, and engagement with the natural environment. For this purpose, the "Appraisal Model" (Martin and White, 2000) has been used as a theoretical framework that sheds light on Arran Stibbe's (2015) ecolinguistic model of Evaluation. It highlights several rhetorical devices through which the narrators expressed their positive attitude towards "the stories they lived by." They rhetorically bespeak the readers to appreciate the environmental beauty of the Northern areas of Pakistan as it is surrounded by beauty and provides a therapeutic potency to build a strong relationship between man and his motherland. The study is limited as it only attempts to praise the beauty of Northern areas by appraisal patterns and does not include the other counterparts of Pakistan. However, the study is significant as it endeavors to appreciate the environmental beauty of Pakistan and provides new avenues for scholars to bridge a gap between ecolinguistics and other areas of linguistics, such as critical discourse analysis, pragmatics, and semantics

Hybrid’s Hunt for Home: A Postcolonial Study of Bapsi Sidhwa’s Fiction

The present study aims at exploring the elements of hybridity and assimilation in the fictional expedition of Bapsi Sidhwa. The work in question adheres to the theoretical construct of Postcolonial theory by utilizing Bhabha’s concept of Hybridity which suggests that the colonizers and the colonized, through their interaction, mutually construct their subjectivities and this interaction destabilizes the hierarchy of superior and inferior cultures. The research is primarily qualitative in nature and the selected texts namely, An American Brat (1993) and The Crow Eaters (1980) are subjected to close reading for explicating the instances where the characters’ social practices and personal experiences display hybrid cultural forms, patterns and parameters. The novels actually depict a clash and an unbalanced conflict between different cultures. Though the characters yearn for saving their own cultures yet at the same time they are forced to sacrifice their traditions. . The current research shines light on the implications of multiculturalism and highlights an increasing interaction between different nations. The study contends that identity is a process, constantly being redesigned and refashioned. In the light of the findings, it can be concluded that identity is fluid, never complete, always in process owing to transnational and transcultural flows in the globalized world of today. The current study can be helpful in understanding the dynamics of identity and the challenges to the cultural purity in the world of diaspora