ANALYSIS OF LINGUISTIC CONSTRUCTION OF CLIMATE CHANGE DISCOURSE IN PAKISTANI PRINT MEDIA

Abstract

In Pakistan print media Climate change discourse encompasses multifaceted aspects centered on numerous purposes. i.e. raising public awareness, formulating policy guidelines and seeking global support. As a country Pakistan has found itself in a precarious situation due to climate change related challenges as its sufferings outnumber the country’s very little contribution evident from the fact that it contributes merely 01 percent to greenhouse gas emissions. In this context narratives produced by media play very pivotal role and linguistic analysis of such narratives and underlying discourse is also imperative due to the importance of language use in framing the climate crisis. This study based on qualitative research analyzed the articles published in the leading national English Newspaper namely Dawn; hence the said newspaper was used as an instrument of Data Collection .Using purposive sampling, the four articles published at different intervals of time i.e. 2022, 2024, and 2025 related to climate change on the basis of their relevance to climate change in general as well as their specific focus on 2022 devastating floods in terms of climate change were selected from the Dawn website. This study explored dominant linguistic features and strategies used in linguistic construction of the climate change discourse i.e used two linguistic theoretical constructs .i.e. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Fairclough, 1995) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday, 1994) This study explored linguistic construction of climate change discourse in Pakistani print media using to explore the lexical choices used I constructing such a discourse. For analyzing data three dimensional model of Critical Discourse Analysis and Systemic Functional linguistics construct were used. Findings of the study revealed that various lexical choices and linguistic features used in the discourse. For instance Metaphors were used for conveying urgency, showing certainty. Modality, on the other hand, was used to indicate not only certainty but also expressed the demand for action. Nominalization and passivization, however, stood for obscurity and agentless construction and  certain lexical choices for example Words like 'justice,' 'victims,' and 'Global South'  suggested ideological framing and call for international responsibility.