Representation of War on Terror in Pakistani Newspapers: A Multimodal Analysis

Abstract

This paper deals with linguistic and visual representation of war on terror in Pakistani English and Urdu newspapers published after the event of 9/11. It is an attempt to understand and highlight the ideological squaring of the issue through the selective semiotic resources. Multimodal critical discourse analysis allows us to deconstruct the meaning of lexical and visual choices used by the producers of the text to present events and people strategically. The research uses multimodal critical discourse approach (Machin, 2007) along with Van Leeuwen’s framework for recontextualisation (2008) and Fairclough’s (2003) framework for visual and linguistic analyses of the political cartoons to explore the hidden ideologies. The multimodal analysis of political cartoons systematically presents and unveils the use of specific semiotic modes employed to communicate certain ideologies, identities and values.