A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Left and Right Wing Ideologies in Pakistani English Newspaper Editorials

Abstract

The present study basically analyzes the Left and Right Wing ideologies in Pakistani English newspapers regarding Osama Bin Laden’s death and PNS Mehran base attack. The study conducts the content analysis of the editorials of two Pakistani English newspapers; the Daily Dawn and the Daily Nation from 3^rd May, 2011 to 3^rd June, 2011. Editorials have the potential to shape opinion, create reality and convey ideologies. In order to investigate the issues this study explore the ideologies in the discourse through certain levels of analysis as social analysis, cognitive analysis and particularly discourse analysis which consists syntactic structure, lexicon, global and local semantics and rhetorical structures of the discourse by using van Dijk’s model(1993) of critical discourse analysis. For this purpose both qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection and analysis were used. Finally it brings the results that editorial writers construct reality, advance the ideologies of the in-group and are influenced by their own ideological leanings and those of the newspaper owner. The analysis of selected 20 editorials from both the dailies reveals that editorials cannot be treated as objective opinion pieces but as representative dominant ideologies.

Keywords: Osama Bin Laden, PNS Mehran attack, US, Pakistani defense, Intelligence failure, Military, Taliban, Newspaper editorials.