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Title NEWSPAPER EDITORIALS ON KASHMIR ISSUE: A SPEECH ACT ANALYSIS

Author(s) Kiran Mushtaq

Abstract Language has become the main tool to convey thoughts and ideas, and it in return builds and scrutinizes the ideologies of the masses on a bigger scale. Language has been used in different ways keeping in view the sensitivity of the topic as well as the audience. Different messages have been conveyed indirectly by saying something and meaning something else. At the same time, different mediums have always been used to channel the voice of the representatives of a society and they have been modified and modernized with the passage of time and advancement of technologies. The print media is one of the leading means to express and highlight the events and issues of a nation, both at a national as well as international level. This research is based mainly on how language is used implicitly and explicitly to build a stance, particularly on a very hotly debated matter of Kashmir between the neighboring countries of Pakistan and India. For this purpose, two leading newspapers of Pakistan namely DAWN and THE NEWS are selected to carry out the research. The articles from both the newspapers are selected mainly conveying the issue in the time span of 2016-2018. The framework that is selected to apply on the articles to carry out the study is The Speech Act Theory given by Austin and Searle (1969). The theory is applied to the selected newspaper articles in order to find out what kind of speech acts are mainly used and how they contribute in building a stance on the matter of Kashmir. The research also sheds a light on whether the stance of both newspapers is same or different in regard of the issue of Kashmir. This study is unique as it is an important contribution in studying the news articles in the light of speech acts to build and convey a stance. The results showed the usage of a variety of speech acts in the selected articles, and at the same time, the newspapers varied in their frequency of using a particular speech act. It was concluded that when the implicit meanings are analyzed through speech act theory, both the newspapers differ in the expression of stance on the matter of Kashmir issue.

Type Thesis/Dissertation MS

Faculty Languages

Department English

Language English

Publication Date 2019-02-19

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