A Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis of Gendered Representations of Violence, Agency, and Responsibility in Pakistani English Newspaper Crime Reporting

Abstract

This paper analyses gender representation of violence, agency, responsibility, and victimhood in reporting crime in Pakistani English newspapers. The aim of the study is to define the common linguistic patterns that predetermine the way people understand the concept of gendered violence and argue about the ideologies underlying these conceptions. This study is based on the background of concerns that media crime discourse practices in patriarchal societies tend to normalize violence, blur the responsibility of perpetrators, and subject female victims to moral judgment. One of the research methods used in the study is corpus-assisted Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), which combines quantitative corpus analysis with qualitative discourse analysis. Theoretical framework is based on the three-dimensional model of CDA by Fairclough, social actor representation framework by van Leeuwen, and Systemic Functional Linguistics, especially, transitivity and voice. In the data collection process, a dedicated corpus of crime reports based on gender related violent crimes was prepared by searching the best Pakistani English newspapers with the help of purposive sampling technique. The results indicate that there are systematic gender asymmetries: women are mostly mythologized as passive victims by agentless and evaluative frames whereas men are put into the frames of legal and institutional practices that suppress responsibilities. Patriarchal ideologies are further promoted by victim-blaming discourses and institutional shielding. The research proposes more responsible reporting measures, such as overt assigning agency, less moral watchfulness of victims, and heightened examination of institutional reactions.