CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL SLOGANS OF MAJOR PAKISTANI POLITICAL PARTIES IN ELECTION

Abstract

Political slogans are used as a conduit to disseminate one’s political ideology into masses’ conscious and unconscious and to deconstruct the narrative of the opposition. This research is focused on the slogans which were chanted during the election 2018 keeping in mind the narratives of the respective political parties. The rapport of language with narrative and ideologies is intricate and influences the political power structure substantially. Words contain and shape meanings and the exploitation and distortion of the essence of the meaning can only be understood through CDA, furthermore, the use of lexical choices effects the voting pattern as well. This research is qualitative in nature, where the three-dimensional discourse model of Fairclough and socio cognitive model of Van Dijk have been used as a theoretical framework to comprehend the intricate relationship of language, power and ideology. To linguistically analyze the slogans the Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) analysis which is developed by M.A.K Halliday, with specific focus on Lexicalization (Roger Fowler) has proved very instrumental. This research and analysis help the reader to comprehend the role of lexical choices, syntactic structures and metaphorization in constructing a narrative and its subsequent clout over the political power structure. Also, the significance of building one’s narrative and deconstructing opponents’ narrative through a slogan at the same time