Media, Power, and Persuasion: A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Print Media Advertisements in Pakistan

The study presents a multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) of the language used in print media advertisements published in Pakistan’s national newspapers. A qualitative research design was used to analyze the data by looking at two features, i.e., i) the strategies to persuade people to buy a particular product and ii) the use of linguistic choices to establish a narrative in political ads. Eight English advertisements were randomly selected from Google Images for the analysis. The study used the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) theoretical framework with a Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA) approach by Kress and Leeuwen (2005). The study revealed that print media ads that advertise products use powerful language that convinces the consumer in decision-making towards buying that product, and the ads that the government advertises help build a positive narrative, an agenda, or a specific ideology towards a political party. Moreover, it explored how cultural touch in ads is added to play with the psychology and emotions of the public. This study will help explore more genres of advertising in the future as it is becoming popular with the emergence of different media platforms. References: Aftab, S., Iqbal, M. K., & Rashid, A. (2021). A critical discourse analysis of the linguistic features of billboards. Global Social Sciences Review, 6(1), 356-362. https://doi.org/10.31703/gssr.2021(VI-I).36 Akorede, T. G. (2024). A multimodal critical discourse analysis of selected Facebook advertising posts (Bachelor's thesis). Department of English, Faculty of Arts, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ilé-Ifè, Osun State, Nigeria. Bhatia, T. K. (2000). Advertising in rural India: Language, marketing communication and consumerism. Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. Bustan, T. S., & Dawood, H. Q. (2024). Ideological and linguistic features analyses of US presidential written discourse addressing immigration and terrorism issues. Journal of the College of Languages (JCL), 50, 85-106. Coates, T. F. G. (1908). Mr. Thomas J Barratt, “The father of modern advertising”. Modern Business, 107–115. Coche, R., & Bell, T. R. (2024). Front-page prominence and newspaper ownership: Examining US women’s national team coverage after 2015 and 2019 World Cup. Victories Journalism, 25(3), 710-728. Fairclough, N. (2013). Language and Power (2nd ed.). Routledge. Grunig, J. E. (1978). Defining publics in public relations: The case of a suburban hospital. Journalism Quarterly, 55(1), 109-124. Jewitt, C., Bezemer, J., & Kress, G. (2011). Annotation in school English: A social semiotic historical account. Teachers College Record, 113(13), 129-152. Khan, M. A., Malik, M. R., & Dar, S. R. (2017). Deconstruction of ideological discursivity in Pakistani print media advertisements from CDA perspective. Ervena: The Journal of Linguistics and Literature, 1(1), 57-79. Kriegel, J. (2021). The economic problem: From barter to commodity money to electronic money (No. 982). Working Paper. Liu, Q., Rui, Y., Gupta, A., & Cadiz, J. J. (2001, March). Automating camera management for lecture room environments. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 442-449). Qayyum, N., & Ali, M. J. (2024). The notion of beauty in the selected Pakistani advertisements: A multimodal critical discourse analysis. VFAST Transactions on Education and Social Sciences, 12(1), 33-45. Ramanathan, R., & Hoon, T. B. (2015). Application of critical discourse analysis in media discourse studies. 3L: Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies, 21(3). Reisner, A. E. (1992). The news conference: How daily newspaper editors construct the front page. Journalism Quarterly, 69(4), 971-986. Shah, M. I., & Saher, N. (2019). A critical discourse analysis (CDA) of rhetorical devices used in advertisements of beauty products in Pakistani print media. International Journal of Social Sciences, Humanities and Education, 3(1). Shaheen, U., Khan, S. B., & Aziz, S. (2016). Manipulative power of Pakistani real state print advertisement: A critical discourse study. Journal of Social Sciences, 267. Van Leeuwen, T. (2005). Multimodality, genre and design. In S. Norris & R. H. Jones (Eds.), Discourse in action (pp. 73-93). Routledge. Zainal, A. G., Besar, I., Fitria, A., Rezeki, F., & Pratama, P. A. (2024). The role of hyperbolic figures in influencing consumers on social media: A stylistic study on shampoo advertisements. RETORIKA: Jurnal Ilmu Bahasa, 10(3), 729-742.