Discourse Analysis of Headlines on Ideological Representation of Rifts and Desertions in Political Parties of Pakistan

Abstract

Media studies have encountered substantial importance regarding the manipulation of public opinion in order to construct political reality. The reason for this significance is the biasness of media that is treated non- critically, and believed as transparent and apolitical by the general masses. In concern to media language in Pakistani press, it is widely accepted and commonly shared notion that media is playing its role very positively and has no ideological concerns. Therefore, it is viewed independent and free from any bias. However, this is not the case; in fact, instead of producing factual information, media discourses are ideological and serve the purpose of manipulating the ideas of its public. In this regard, data has been obtained from widely circulated two Pakistani English newspapers (The News International and DAWN). This study examines how political parties are socially, discursively, and linguistically represented in the selected Pakistani newspapers. To answer the question of biasness in media discourse, the study uses Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to investigate the representation of political parties in news reports of the newspapers from July 01, 2012 to December 31, 2012 --- a very significant pre-election period. Firstly, the analysis examines both discursive and social practices related to constructing political discourse in relation to the process of news making role of media. Secondly, the news headlines are analyzed linguistically in terms of metaphor, metonymy, transitivity, modality, lexical choices, presupposition, and intertextuality. Moreover, the news headlines are analyzed at broader social and political level in order to find ideological underpinnings incorporated in political discourse. Fairclough’s (1989) model well suits the analysis of our corpus from the selected Pakistani English newspapers in order to view the representation of rifts and desertions in political parties.