A Critical Discourse Analysis of Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan’s First Public Address

Abstract

The critical Discourse analysis is often applied to political discourse analysis including the public speech (J.Wang, 2010) that views language as a social practice. The objective of current study is to highlight the discourse which has been worked behind the first speech delivered by Imran khan after taking oath of premiership, and examine his political maturity. Imran Khan was once a renowned cricket celebrity and now he has become the head of leading political party (PTI) in Pakistan that has won majority of seats in the recent held general election 2018 in the country. The stance he has maintained in his political career is “the fair play and justice”. The same has been reiterated in his median speech as the prime minister of Pakistan. The discourse has been analyzed according to Fairclough’s tri-phased model. He developed the concept of synthetic personalization to account for the linguistic effects providing an appearance of direct concern and contact with the individual listener in mass-crafted discourse phenomena (Language & Power, 1989). The data has been observed from the textual version of PM Khan Speech with a benchmark approach. The current study explores how he carries various phases to control the mind of masses as language is the basic tool for constructing individual and group relationship and(R.Fowler)  discourse analysis studies attempt to elaborate this relationship.

Keywords: Discourse , fair play , challenges ,  ideology , power , control