Letters to the editor: A resistant genre of unrepresented voices

Abstract

This article examines the letters to editor (LE) genre unique to the Pakistani English newspapers in the post-9/11 socio-political historical context. Bhatia’s (2002) framework of applied genre theory was central to this study of the letters to the editor corpus that focused on textual links, rhetorical structure, and argumentative patterns in the Pakistani LE discourse. The corpus-driven discourse analysis demonstrated diversity in organization patterns, and the juxtaposition of general discussion, references to particular incidents, and personal accounts, exhibiting what Bhatia (2002) calls the ‘seemingly chaotic realities’ of a society in transition. The findings reveal an overwhelming dissatisfaction of the people vis-a-vis life in general, and the government and its seemingly insurmountable distance from Pakistani people, more specifically. The study draws attention to letters to the editor as a resistant genre in public discourse.