Abstract
The goal set for the present study is to investigate the temporal and spatial deixis which are used to represent and build the national identity of Pakistan in the two leading indigenous English newspapers. The study investigates how the WAR and NATION frames are used in the opinion articles of The News and DAWN to project the negative image of Pakistan by using temporal and spatial deixis. The data collection is based on the ten years of opinion articles from 2007–2017. The political situation of Pakistan in the year 2007 was crucial and it is marked as a step towards the revival of civilian democracy through the announcement of general election in Pakistan during the ongoing war on terror. Purposive sampling technique is used in the selection of data. The theoretical foundation is based on the Anderson’s (1991) Imagined community. The empirical framework is based on Harts’ (2014) Critical Cognitive Discourse Analysis. Both qualitative and quantitative methods are employed. Antconc is used to generate the frequencies and concordance lines of the text. The data analysis shows that journalists mostly projected the negative image of Pakistan by utilizing different deixis and by linking the events of past from shared memories with the present and the future events by conceptualizing WAR and NATION Frames.
Highlights
National IdentityThe idea of ‘nation’ and ‘national identity’ dates back to antiquity. The term national identity is generally related with nationalism (Anderson, 1991)
The goal set for the present study is to investigate the temporal and spatial deixis which are used to represent and build the national identity of Pakistan in the two leading indigenous English newspapers
The study investigates how the WAR and NATION frames are used in the opinion articles of The News and DAWN to project the negative image of Pakistan by using temporal and spatial deixis
Summary
The idea of ‘nation’ and ‘national identity’ dates back to antiquity. The term national identity is generally related with nationalism (Anderson, 1991). Anderson (1991) presented a classic and compact definition of national identity He proposes that a nation is an imagined political community; limited in terms of its borders, and enjoys the status of a sovereign power. He emphasized on the ‘the role of print media’ as a key power house which spread the sentiments of nationalism amongst the nationals. Smith (1991) maintains that nationalism is used by the political elites to impact the nationals and leads towards a certain direction He endorsed Anderson’s idea of religious nationalism and claims that religious nationalism is gaining momentum in Israel with the revival of Hebrew and with the promotion of Judaism while in countries like Pakistan and Malaysia Islamic nationalism is being promoted Many national dailies and weekly newspapers are published in English language in Pakistan
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