Constructing Urdu through Law and Media: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the 2015 Supreme Court Judgment and English Newspaper Coverage in Pakistan (2015–2023)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.48047/Keywords:
Urdu, English, language policy, critical discourse analysis, Supreme Court, Pakistan, postcolonial identity, media discourse, Fairclough, ideologyAbstract
This study has focused on how the 2015 Supreme Court judgment for the official status of Urdu in Pakistan was reported and discussed in the English language newspapers from the period 2015 to 2023. This research aimed to investigate how Urdu is made meaningful as a national and official language through legal orders and media discourses. The design of the research was qualitative and theoretical framework was Norman Fairclough’s three dimensional critical discourse analysis (CDA). Purposive sampling was used in collecting the data from media texts such as Supreme Court judgments and some reports, editorials and news articles appearing in Dawn, The News, Daily Pakistan, Business Recorder and The Express Tribune. These texts were analyzed across three dimensions of 3D model. The findings at textual level have indicated that the Supreme Court’s judgment use strong modality, evaluative language, and sustain Urdu as a constitutional right. Early media reports of the court’s discourse at the level of discursive practice reproduced court discourse as the factual truth, shifted through institutional or pragmatic lenses. In later coverage, evidencing changes in media practices and audience expectations. It provided the ground for Urdu in terms of national identity, decolonization, modernization and bureaucratic efficiency at the level of social practice, and language policy serves as a lens through which power structures in society are reflected and reproduced over time. Such shifts are part of a larger change in state and media priorities from the realm of symbolic language rights to policy narratives of modernization and bureaucracy. The research is important to give an understanding of how media discourse in Pakistan relates language policy, power and postcolonial identity.
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