A Critical Discourse Analysis of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s Speech in the General Assembly of United Nations

Authors

  • Malik Ajmal Gulzar Department of English, Allama Iqbal Open University, Islamabad
  • Muhammad Mooneeeb Ali Department of English, Government College of Science Wahdat Road, Lahore
  • Nazir Ahmad Malik University of Lahore, Gujrat Campus
  • Rashida Perveen Department of English, Allama Iqbal Open University, Islamabad
  • Shumaila Zaman Kiyani Founadation University, Rawalpindi

Abstract

This paper applies critical discourse analysis to analyze the discourse of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s (hereafter Bhutto) speech which he made in the United Nations General Assembly in 1971. The study tries to determine the connotation of the ideology of his words for a country which was affected by the chaos of Indo-Pak war in 1971. Ultimately, this pandemonium resulted in the formation of a new state called Bangladesh. For the present study, qualitative methodology using Fairclough’s model for critical discourse analysis has been employed. The outcomes of the present study revealed that Bhutto wanted to show the world that Pakistan is not a ship without a captain. He truly represented the emotion and feelings of a scrupulous nation. Bhutto tried to demonstrate himself as a real leader of the country in that particular span of time in the United Nations. In the history of Pakistani politics, there has been no Pakistani leader except him who could dare to use such oratory against and in front of these superpowers on their home turf. It’s a vivid fact that Bhutto’s speech had both practical and theoretical implications and through Fairclough’s model both aforementioned implications through text analysis are surfaced.

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Published

2020-10-28

Issue

Vol. 22 No. 2 (2019)

Section

Articles

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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