THE USE OF DISCURSIVE PRACTICES FOR THE PROMOTION OF POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF PAKISTANI PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE By: Mazhar Iqbal I.D. No. 1300-8237-003 Ph. D. Linguistics Supervisor: Dr Muhammad Islam ------------ Department of Linguistics and Communications (DLC) Institute of Liberal Arts (ILA) University of the Management and Technology (UMT), Lahore 2020 CDA OF PAKISTANI PARLIAMEANETARY DEBATES DEDICATED TO DR SANDI MICHELE de OLIVEIRA v CDA OF PAKISTANI PARLIAMEANETARY DEBATES Acknowledgement First of all, I am thankful to ALLAH Almighty for blessing me with the strength and patience to complete this arduous work. I owe special thanks to my respected teachers for their kind guidance and my parents for their invaluable prayers. I would like to thank my family which has suffered a lot but kept on extending its cooperation. I am also thankful to my friends and class fellows who have always supported and encouraged me. Special thanks to my supervisor, Dr Muhammad Islam, a wonderful human being, who has always supported and guided me like a friend and had more confidence in my capabilities than I (do). I am greatly indebted to Dr Muhammad Shaban, Dr Nadia Anwar and Dr Maria Isabel Maldonado for their guidance and support. I owe successful completion of my dissertation to HEC Pakistan for funding me through IRSIP scholarship for research at the University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Demark. I don‟t think it would have been possible to complete my dissertation without this financial support. I am unable to find suitable words to express my gratitude and appreciation to my respected supervisor, Dr Sandi Michele de Oliveira, Associate Professor, Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark, for her guidance, cooperation and encouragement. This project would never have been realized without her help. vi CDA OF PAKISTANI PARLIAMEANETARY DEBATES Abstract A language is a primary source of expressing and reshaping ideology (Fowler, 1985) and politicians use it as a power to put certain ideas into practice (Bayram, 2010). This study aims to highlight political ideology propagated through political language, especially, in the parliamentary discourse. Speeches of the fourteen parliamentarians representing four leading political parties from the third joint session of 2013-2018 tenure, were selected for the analysis. The study used CDA approach for analyzing the underlying ideology in the speeches and seeing the partisan effects in the selected speeches. To investigate an us-them strategy for in-group positive and out-group negative presentation, the study employed three discursive practices i.e. in-group positive presentation vs out-group negative presentation, proximization and clusivity. The results reveal that the discursive practices may be used to win the support and sympathy of the people by presenting the in-group positively and out-group negatively. These may also be used to show a sense of responsibility, loyalty and sincerity. Pakistani politicians have used the practices to show unity, political involvement, shared responsibilities and to create political harmony. The study further reveals that the discursive practices may simultaneously serve as reproaching, aggressiveness, defence, persuasive and image building strategies. The practices may be used to express the feelings of desperation, suppression, association and disassociation as well. The study concludes that (by showing how political discourse reflects the ideologies of the certain political groups and how it is used to construct and reconstruct them) political discourse is used not only to reflect but also to construct and re-construct the political ideologies of certain groups. The methodological framework used for this study may be applied to analyse other political discourses to unveil their embedded ideologies. vii CDA OF PAKISTANI PARLIAMEANETARY DEBATES Table of Contents List of Figures ..................................................................................................................................... x List of Tables ...................................................................................................................................... xi Abbreviations ................................................................................................................................... xiii Chapter I Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 Background of the Study ................................................................................................................ 1 Statement of the Problem ................................................................................................................ 5 Research Questions ......................................................................................................................... 6 The Organization of the Thesis ....................................................................................................... 6 Chapter II The Context of the Study ................................................................................................... 9 Pakistan and its Ideology: An Overview of the Political System of Pakistan and Critical Events in 2013-2014 ................................................................................................................................... 9 Pakistani Parliamentary System .................................................................................................... 12 Leading Pakistani Parliamentary Parties ...................................................................................... 13 The General Election of 2013 and its Political Impact ................................................................. 22 Important Events from August 14, 2014, to September 2, 2014 .................................................. 26 Ch. Nisar Ali Khan and Mr Aitzaz Ahsan's Clash ........................................................................ 37 Chapter III Literature Review ........................................................................................................... 41 Critical Discourse Analysis........................................................................................................... 41 Ideology and its Centrality in CDA .............................................................................................. 43 Political Discourse as Ideological Discourse ................................................................................ 49 Major Approaches witfhin CDA ................................................................................................... 56 Political Discourse Analysis: A Sub-branch of CDA ................................................................... 63 In-group Positive Presentation and Out-group Negative Presentation: A Key Feature of Political Discourse....................................................................................................................................... 65 Studies of Political Discourse in Pakistan .................................................................................... 71 Chapter IV Research Methodology ................................................................................................... 75 Selection of Parliamentarians and Debates for the Analysis ........................................................ 75 Selection of the Discursive Practices for the Analysis ................................................................. 80 Chapter V Ideology through In-group and Out-group Polarization .................................................. 87 In-group Positive Presentation and Out-group Negative Presentation ......................................... 87 Emphasizing Out-group Negative Actions ................................................................................. 123 viii CDA OF PAKISTANI PARLIAMEANETARY DEBATES Emphasizing Out-group Negative Actions as a Party................................................................. 123 Negative Portrayal of the Individual Politicians ......................................................................... 145 Chapter VI Proximization in the Parliamentary Speeches .............................................................. 155 Proximization .............................................................................................................................. 155 Proximization by the PML-N Parliamentarians .......................................................................... 156 Proximization by the PPP Parliamentarians ............................................................................... 171 Proximization by the PTI Parliamentarians ................................................................................ 179 Chapter VII Ideology through Clusivity - Association and Disassociation .................................... 188 Clusivity ...................................................................................................................................... 188 Ideology through the Use of the First-person Plural Inclusive/Exclusive Pronouns .................. 189 Ideology through the Use of Plural Exclusive Pronouns Ham/Hamain (we/us) ........................ 191 Ideology through the Use of Plural Inclusive Pronouns ham/hamain (we/us) ........................... 218 The use of inclusive pronouns ham/hamain for the nation by the MQM ..................................