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Title REPRESENTATION OF COVID-19 NARRATIVES IN PAKISTANI ENGLISH NEWSPAPERS: AN ECOLINGUISTICS PERSPECTIVE

Author(s) Sajida Hanif

Abstract This study explores role of print media in spreading information about pandemic and environmental changes during pandemic. As environmental issues, climate change and such pandemics are common problems of the planet and connected to health of ecosystem. Therefore, media especially print media is central in disseminating information regarding such disasters. All such disasters and crisis are connected somewhere in background. Therefore, there is need of proper way and medium to spread information in such crucial time and encourage people to play vital role in sustainability of ecosystem. As language plays central role in promoting such ecological narratives that save or destroy our environment and hence our ecosystem. This study aims to investigate the strategies employed in the construction of four stories such as erasure, salience, conviction and evaluation in English newspaper’s articles and highlights how different linguistics features makes the text natural and persuasive. The researcher selects total thirty articles from three English newspapers such as Dawn, The Express Tribune and the News. Authors often employ these strategies to erase, foreground important aspects. Stibbe (2015) has been used as theoretical framework to analyze the strategies in the construction of erasure, salience, evaluation and conviction in Covid-19 related newspapers’ articles. The findings of study suggests that different strategies are employed in the construction of these four stories in environmental discourses such as appraisal patterns, modality, facticity patterns, euphemism, foregrounding, activation, personification, metaphors, co-hyopnymy, passive constructions, nominalisation, abstraction and hyponym etc. Moreover, the study concludes that salience has been given to improved environment during pandemic however selfish humans are blamed for creating situation for covid-19 by destroying nature. Through analysis of these stories’ researcher investigates the connection between environment and covid-19. The study emphasizes demand for encouraging the beneficial stories and resisting destructive stories by spreading awareness among people regarding harmful aspects of destructive stories.

Type Thesis/Dissertation MS

Faculty Languages

Department English

Language English

Publication Date 2024-03-25

Subject English Linguistics

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Format APA

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