Metaphoric Construction: A Critical Analysis of Identity and Ideology in Pakistani Political Discourse

Abstract

The current study falls in the area of Critical Discourse Analysis. It has been further classified in Metaphors Analysis of Political Discourse. The main objectives of the study are to identify metaphoric construction in Pakistani Political Discourse and to explore the ideology, identity, power and hegemony employed by the Politicians through metaphors construction in the speeches. The study addresses the leading research question: How politicians employ the ideology, identity, power and hegemony through metaphors construction in their speeches? The research is qualitative in nature because it involves the corpora of political speeches as research instruments to collect the data. Corpus driven methodology has been used for critical discourse analysis of metaphoric construction. The sample has been selected from the electronic media. Thirty speeches of selected Pakistani political party leaders were selected as sample of the study. Purposive sampling technique was used to draw the sample. The sample was further classified as Pakistan Tehrik e Insaf, Pakistan Muslim League and Pakistan People’s Party. Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA), Fairclough Nine Properties Model and Gee’s Seven Building Tasks Model were used to analyze the text. The analysis reflected that all the party representatives presented their ideology and identity in their speeches by constructing metaphors based on different domains, culture and social practices and all the representatives of the political parties constructed metaphors with the aggressive tone and intention to exercise power and hegemony on the opponent party. The study can be useful for Political influence and propaganda through metaphors.