The Game Changer’: A Critical Discourse Analysis of News Headlines about CPEC

Abstract

CPEC has become the centre of attention for the whole world as it has been entitled as “a game changer”, since Chine has been connected to the European and Gulf states through CPEC via Silk Road. Gawadar has become an important trade centre of the future. Due to these key reasons, this issue is being manipulated and portrayed in different colours at national and international forums. Keeping the present scenario in view, the present study has beeninvested to explore the hidden strategies of different local news papers that how this phenomenon is being portrayed and manipulated. It is an analytical research of media discourse that primarily studies how social power and inequality is manipulated and reproduced through text and talk in both social and political contexts.CDA of journalistic discourse tries to unveil the biased language to make the readers aware of manipulative strategies used in both printed and online news papers.The present study aims at making a comparative study of three daily English newspapers, The “Dawn News”, “The Express Tribune” and “The Business Recorder” about the news headlines on CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) to show the negotiation on the important issues like CPEC via news headlines. Through investing the Critical Discourse Analysis as method,the researchershavetried to investigate the manipulations invested by the editors to represent their own ideologies on the same issue. To meet the same goalthreeheadlines were collected from all these three news papers dealing with the same phenomenon. All those headlines were analysed on the modal of Van Dijk (2000) in terms of discursive strategies through discursive micro and macro strategies presented by Van Dijk. The nature of the study is qualitative. The results show a controversial approach towards the acceptance of this mega project and apprehensions of the stake holders and political figures.