Critical Discourse Analysis of the Interview of Pakistani Film Actress Mehwish Hayat

Abstract

The current study has concentrated on the interview of a Pakistani film actress’s, Mehwish Hayat, conducted by the BBC Asian Network. The study aims to examine the actress’s ideology towards women empowerment in the Pakistani society as well as pin point the self-other representations evident from the pro-women empowerment sentiments in her discourse. In order to examine Hayat’s discourse, the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) has been employed with the specific focus on the Ideological Square Model developed by van Dijk (1998). For the linguistic inquiry, Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics theory has also been used with the emphasis on the Interpersonal Meta-function. The research revealed strong evidences of self-other binary in Hayat’s discourse where she has applied various discursive strategies and techniques to represent her strong ideology of women empowerment in a positive way, while representing the traditional Pakistani male dominant society as negative. In her representation of women of Pakistan, most of her beliefs are pro-women empowerment.