THE IDEOLOGY BEHIND POLITICAL DISCOURSE: A CRITICALANALYSIS OF NAWAZ SHARIF’S SELECTED SPEECHES

Abstract

The study attempts to analyze the transitivity choices in selected (two) speeches of ousted Prime Minister Nawaz
Sharif of Pakistan. The main focus is to know how political leader employs language for representing the experience
and reality of the world around him and in what way the experiential meaning can be recognized. Moreover, it also
attempts to investigate the distribution of material, relational and mental processes with special reference to their
communicative functions. The study is based on Halliday’s Transitivity Framework. The experiential aspect of
discourse under ideational metafunction, is realized by taking account of the material, relational and mental
processes. Both quantitative and qualitative methods are used to process the results. It is also concluded that the
material process holds up the highest percentage followed by relational and mental, which shows that Sharif talks
about tangible things and concrete projects, rather than talking about certain future flimsy promises, which cannot
be observed or long-going. It is further revealed that he is highly dependent on his government or political members
to take any decision. He personally makes very few promises to the public to persuade, rather he has been seen as
reliant on others. It shows that language strategies and philosophies (of an individual) are not explicit, rather they
are hidden in language ideology, which is transferred through communication unconsciously.