Abstract

This paper explores the linguistic construal of political identity in Memogate Scandal in Pakistan with a focus on its discursive construction in a way that portrays the main stakeholders: Government, Opposition and the former Pakistani Ambassador to the US.  The linguistic choices which are significant to key aspects of identity discourses within a coherent framework reflect the underlying ideology of the journalists. Therefore, deconstructing texts to identify agents helps the analysts to uncover implicit interpretations and biases that media discourses exhibit. The paper draws on two analytical frameworks of discourse analysis i.e., transitivity analysis and kinds of entities (Martin and Rose, 2003). The reason for working with two frameworks is that the former helps in finding entities deployed in different roles on the cline of dynamism (Hasan, 1985) and the latter is done through participant representation at the level of nominal group, classified in three categories - concrete, abstract and metaphoric. The analysis has shown noticeable linguistic resources which help writers to refer to entities in an ideological way; for example, in the government category, the Pakistan leader has been referred as Zardari - a politician vs. the President and Presidency, and the ambassador has been shown likewise. In contrast, entities from the opposition have been deployed in individual capacities like Nawaz, Imran etc.

Key Words

News Reporting, Political Identity, Memogate Scandal, Ideology, and Transitivity

Introduction

According to Stubbs (1983), discourse analysis is interested in (a) language use that extends past the limits of a sentence or utterance, (b) the interrelationships between language and society and (c) focuses on the connected and dialogic attributes of everyday communication. One sort of discourse that has remained to be the focus of critical linguists is newspaper discourse. Newspaper discourses have the potential for moulding public opinion they build, maintain and sustain political identities and are significant as they construct, reconstruct and represent the identities of individuals or even groups to serve underlying purposes. Therefore, according to Fairclough and Chouliaraki (1999) the linguistics choices inform about the meaning potential.             

As far as identity is concerned it has many connotations but for the simplicity, I will illustrate some examples from the linguistic construal of political identity. First, people construe their identities by their associations to a political group – we declare our identities by joining particular groups and class. For example, if in Pakistan we wear or host flag in green colour we show our affiliation to the Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz Group   and if the same flag is in three colour stripes i.e., black, red and green that is associated to Pakistan People Party (PPP). And Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)’s flag carries prominently two colours i.e., red for the political strife, green for welfare and prosperity and the white crescent represents the minorities.  In addition, certain lexical items that are peculiar to particular parties are used in order to construct identity - for example, ‘Jiala’, tiger etc. 

The second approach to explore the individual identity is in terms of social values and norms they identify themselves with. For instance, as a thumb rule PPP discusses issues like ‘roti, kapra, makan’ – daily bread, clothing and shelter but on the other side PML-N priorities issues beyond the basic necessitates and same identity profile is applied to the norms like individual vs. society, justice vs. legality, ecology vs. economy etc. Therefore, if we can identify some social values associated to certain groups, we can easily identify the groups associated with them. 




Socio-Political Background

Since the independence in 1947, form of government in the country has dwindled between martial law and democracy. So far, the country has witnessed five martial laws and, some politicians even refer to the military leadership as “state within a state” which is a matter of great controversy. The Memogate Scandal was brought into limelight when Mansoor Ijaz, a Pakistani-American business-person wrote a controversial article for Financial Times in which he claimed that a memorandum was allegedly written by Husain Haqqani on behest of the then President Mr. Asif Ali Zardari. The memo, he claimed was delivered to US Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen. The controversial content of memorandum included: (i) request to turn an eye to any event as a result of military could take control of power over the civilian leadership in Pakistan which was most likely to be done in the aftermath of Osama Bin Laden raid, (ii) to assist in taking over government and military apparatus as a counter-coup (iii) to shift the control of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal to Washington (iv) to put authors of the memo in the new security apparatus to be established in the country (v) and to order US military to conduct strikes in Pakistan. 

The scandal created inordinate commotion in the military-political domain and caught media attention to a great extent. A petition was submitted to Supreme Court on April 19, 2012 with the request to arrest Hussain Haqqani by means of Interpol as he refused to return to Pakistan. Supreme Court assigned commission released its findings that Husain Haqqani authored the controversial memo and that he was called back to Pakistan to face treason. The Memogate scandal was the toughest challenge that the Pakistan People Party (PPP) government could ever face. Therefore, the study will unfold how the stakeholders; the government, opposition and the then Pakistani ambassador to the US were portrayed in the print media. 

Review of the Related Literature

Halliday (1994) suggests that language not only performs the function of referring to the entities which pre-exist as far as representation of identities is concerned but also engraves the world into meaningful parts by means of ideational metafunction where he (ibid) adds that the writer portrays his experience of the occurrences that happen in the material world. Also, Tann (2012) suggests that grammar construes a particular representation of reality for its speakers as events whereas participants ideationally, enact the relationship between the author of the text and its audience which positions them to either give or demand services and information. While, Ochs (1993) defines identity as an umbrella term in its wider scope including social status and interpersonal relations whereas, McClintock (1995) explains that gender, social class and ethnicity are not the separable domains of the living experience rather they are binded in a social fabric. 

Fowler (1991) indicates that language of the newspapers is to be considered as ‘constructed stories’ portrayed from a specific point of view by means of print-media which may procure their own interest. Also, there lies a great difference in the way which different newspapers portray the same individual or an event. Therefore, language of newspapers can never be regarded as being neutral. Oktar (2001) outlines the process of development of social identity in two steps: (i) the recognition and distinction of two groups; such as us and them, (ii) the attachments of certain values to each group. Whereas, Fairclough (1995) is of the view that media discourses have been discussed under influence of other disciplines such as sociolinguistics, linguistics, conversation analysis and most importantly critical discourse analysis so, he (ibid) acknowledges the significance of analysis media discourses within research on contemporary process of social and cultural change. Similarly, Fairclough (1989) believes that ideology is most effective in supporting people in leading positions, if it is concealed or perceived as commonsense so the journalists present a perspective that meets their vested interests in deploying and projecting certain identities.  As Conboy (2006) points out that print-media is an institution which tends to praise or criticize the actions of the politicians in power. 

Evidently, newspapers also build up identities through their portrayals. For example, Lukin et al. (2005) have probed out that newspaper discourses shape up different ideologies through identity construction. Therefore, working out with the participants’ projections helps to dig out embedded stance in the given discourses. As far as this study is concerned, I am interested in investigating the construal of political identity with reference to a particular issue of Memogate scandal. Wodak (1999) discusses political identity as an outcome of the discourses in relation to their respective cultures. 

Up till now, I have elaborated that discourse and identity are closely associated to each other and this perspective has been revealed in many of studies, for example, Fairclough (1995); Van Dijk (1998); Bell (1991); Fowler (1991); Stamou (2001) and Wodak (2001) to name a very few. Piller (2001) reaffirms this notion that in today’s world the representation of political identities is hybrid and multifaceted, the media plays an important role in shaping those political identities. Therefore, the linguistic analysis of media discourses does a great deal of unfolding construed identities along implicit realities. Such demystification of texts in order to get information of the hidden agendas requires a linguistic frame work. For example, see Norman Fairclough (1995), Van Dijk (1998), and Ruth Wodak (2001) for a fuller detail.  As per the focus of this study I find Hallidayan model of transitivity (1985/94), and Martin and Rose (2008) more suitable in order to uncover the construed political identities. 

Research Methodology

The data has been taken from the three leading Pakistani newspapers; Dawn, The Nation, and The News specifically the headlines. The prime reason for choosing these newspapers is their wider circulation which implies widespread propagation of identity information constructed with an assumption that they portray different ideologies. For example, daily Dawn is known to be neutral and the News exhibits leftist (anti-government) ideology whereas the Nation is labelled as pro-government newspaper (Tehseem, 2013). 152 headlines with their respective lead lines were selected for the data. The criteria applied for the selection of data primarily includes the subject matter i.e., Memogate scandal secondly, the news related to the entities in focus. The following are the contextual variables for analysis of the data:  

Field: It tends to deal with the subject matter and the body of the news which formulates the experiential notion. In this paper this phenomenon deals with the process of construction and representation of identities of the main agents in the Memogate Controversy.  

Tenor: It tends to define the relationship between the participating agents, and those writers are Pakistani journalists who mostly write for the educated Pakistani readership.

Mode: It tends to elaborate the medium through which information is being communicated and in this case they comprise head-lines and the lead-lines that intends to provide a description, evaluation, and readership persuasion as a whole.

The present study is planned to investigate the following research questions. 




Research Questions

? What transitivity patterns do the

journalists deploy to construe political identities in news headlines? 

? How does the portrayal of different kinds of entities help in construal of political identity?




Systemic Functional Linguis1tics: Hallidayan Model (Transitivity)

Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday, 1985) proposes the fact that language tends to make a sense of several kinds of meaning simultaneously and is hence semantically rich. Halliday and Matthiessen (2004) have classified these meanings that exist and are conveyed into three metafunctions i.e., ideational, interpersonal and textual. Halliday (ibid) views that we humans experience the world as “a flow of events, or [a series of] ‘goings-on’’ (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p. 170). This phenomenon of decoding the experiential meanings by the help of grammar is realized as the transitivity analysis (ibid). Further, transitivity is defined by Halliday and Matthiessen (2004) as a system that organizes the world experiences into a set of manageable process types. 

The important elements are:

i. Processes: What kind of event or occurrence is being described which in this paper majorly is writing of the memo.

ii. Participants: Includes the individuals or agents involved in the processes which in the case of this research are three leading stakeholders: previous Pakistani envoy to the US, Government, and Opposition.

iii. Government & Opposition and 

iv. Circumstance: Specifies that when and in what manner an event has taken place. The circumstance in context of this research is the writing of memorandum soon after the operation in which Osama Bin Laden was killed in Abbotabad by US Marines.

The choices made have implications for the particular meaning conveyed, especially when taken into the light of other probable choices. Since it is crucial to bear in mind that ‘choice [in SFG] entails exclusion as well as inclusion’ (Oktar, 2001). 

In terms of systemic functional linguistics, experience is divided into three categories: (i) happening and doing; (ii) saying and sensing; and (iii) having and being. These three experiential domains are responsible for constituting the four distinct process types i.e material, mental, verbal, and relational (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004). 

1. Firstly, material processes refer to ‘the processes ‘of doing’ or ‘of action’ (Eggins, 2004, p. 230), that has an Actor (an individual or agent who ‘performs the action’) and a Goal (‘the participant at whom the process is directed or to whom the process is extended’ (ibid: p. 231)).  In any situation, if the Goal is present, the material processes will tend to be creative, i.e. putting a Goal into action or transforming it, a procedure in which a pre-existing Goal is ‘done to’.

2. Secondly, mental processes signify the those primarily of a cognitive nature that occurs internally, ‘in the world of consciousness’ (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p. 170).  The agents connected to these are the Sensor (the individuals in mind when the process is taking place), and lastly the Phenomenon (comprising of ‘thought’ and ‘sensed’) (ibid, 2004).

3. Thirdly, relational processes give a descriptive view of the way relations exist within the ideas and concepts.  They are further classified into two further subcategories such as identifying and attributive.  The attributive process is utilized to give attributive classifications (such as possessions), whose contributors are the Attribute (that which is ascribed to the entity) and the Carrier (‘the entity which ‘carries’ the attribute’ (Thompson, 2004, p. 96).  (ibid: 96).

4. Fourthly, verbal processes, focuses on ‘saying’ and ‘conveying messages’. The focal interactant is Sayer in a verbal process, i.e., the individual which serves to convey message.  Moreover, three different participants may appear: the Receiver (‘the participant at whom the saying is addressed’ (ibid: 101), the Target (the participant to whom the saying is directed (ibid: 101) and the Verbiage (a summary of the message).  One central component of verbal processes is their ability to project (i.e., where the message is expressed in a reported clause. 

5. Fifthly, behavioural processes, mainly are concerned with the psychological and physiological behaviors. They are categorized to differentiate purely between mental processes and the outward physical signs of those metal process types. Typically, they have one participant i.e. behaver and physical expression is called range. For example, she gave a faint expression. 

6. Finally, the last process type in transitivity is existential processes, primarily these process types show the existence of one entity and they are easily recognizable because they are followed by ‘there’. The only one participant is existential clauses is existent. For example, there was a princess in the old castle. 

The Cline of Dynamism

Hasan (1985) accounts that “-er” roles and “-ed” roles make sense to other systemic transitivity variables and draws extensively on descriptions of a range of languages and typological generalizations. According to this (Ibid), transitivity is a matter of degree — a scale from least transitive to most transitive. She has identified different parameters whose values tend to co-vary and collectively determine the degree of transitivity. These parameters includes ones that are directly relevant to the distinction between “-er” roles and “-ed” roles, for example the degree of potency of one participant, the degree of affectedness of another participant, the degree of actualization of the process (realis / irrealis), the polarity of the clause.

The cline of dynamism is a perspective that, according to Thompson (2008), "can be used to illuminate Transitivity patterns" (p 11). As stated earlier, it functions to work-out which transitivity role has a greater dynamism. It helps to capture the differences between the greater dynamic transitivity roles and effected roles the 'done to' ones. Mainly, this cline can be most effortlessly applied to material process types in order to work-out greater dynamic and less dynamic roles in transitivity.  The cline has six bands that expose a measureable scale from the greater to the least dynamic roles.




 

Table 1. The Cline of Dynamism (adapted from Hasan 1985/1989, via Thompson 2008).

	Band	Role	Example
	1	Initiator/Assigner	The parliamentary committee has condemned Mansoor Ijas as a suspect to have forged the issue who wrote in newspaper to lime light the memo scandal.
	2	Actor (+Goal)	Hussain Haqqani sent a memo to Mullen...
	3	Actor (-Goal or +Scope)   Phenomenon (Subject) Behaver Sayer   Senser	Haqqani flew to Pakistan. / The suspected memo brought many controversies. The opposition threatened the presidency. Gillani moaned the memo in a sheer worry to his government. Ijaz alleged that Zardari was behind the memo The president smelled conspiracy after the ISI briefing to the apex court.
	4	Token   Carrier	The Presidency remained silent for several days on this grave issue. The scandal instigated mass protest.
	5	Beneficiary   Phenomenon (Complement)Scope	The doctors examined have Zardari after the shock. The court has suspected the critical points. CJ met Gillani in his chamber.
	6	Goal	They detained Haqqani for several hours.

 




The cline illustrates a choice of the most dynamic to the lesser dynamic role because the given band 1 to 6 demonstrates the level of transitivity dynamism where every role classified in a particular band role. As both the assigner and initiator got something to do with the other entities in the transitivity roles so their roles are marked very dynamic. A clause carring an 'Actor' with a 'Goal’ categorized more dynamic compared to 'Actor-Goal or +Scope', because the former signifies that the action creates an impact while the latter does not deploy any impact. On the other hand, the reason for the Goal as a participant occupying the lowest band is because it is always 'acted upon'. Interestingly, phenomenon as a participant in the mental clauses appears twice in the cline because as a subject (since it impacts the senser) appears more dynamic than as a complement where it does not directly impact other entities. From the cline given above I can deduce that the moderate bands deploy the participant roles which show less effect on other entities such as senser, carrier, sayer, beneficiary, and token.

 

Kinds of Entities

Martin and Rose (2008) state that objects and persons accumulate different categories of entities. Most commonly the concrete entities, like that of boyfriends, woman, feet, arms and abstract entities, like pardon, crime, requests, transgression are distinguished from one another. The difference between abstract as well as concrete methods of explanation demonstrates a distribution in the areas of activity in modern cultures in the present era, for instance personal sphere of an individual like his ‘uncommonsense’ fields of professions and different organizations such as schools, churches, political parties, and many more. The following table shows the kinds of entities with examples.




 

Table 2. Kinds of Entities in Discourse

Indefinite Pronouns		some/any/nothing/body/one
Concrete	Everyday	Man, girlfriend, face, hands, apple, house
	Specialized	Mattock, lathe, gearbox
Abstract	Technical	Inflation, metafunction, gene
	Institutional	Offence, hearing, application, violation, arrest
	Semiotic	Question, issue, letter, extract
	Generic	Colour, time, manner, way, kind, class, part
Metaphoric	Process	Relationship, marriage, exposure, humiliation
	Quality	Justice, truth, integrity, bitterness, security

 




There are many kinds of entities that can be distinguished in particular fields more than in general fields. This implies that there are a lot of ‘concrete’ things that are found in the specialized world in profuseness and less in daily life of individuals (e.g., backhole loader, skit steer loader, yarder). Although they are specialized terms and are being used by the technicians but the meanings of these terms can be read and hence the terms can be used. However, in contrast to this we see that the meanings of terms such as linguistics, mathematics, science (e.g., functional grammar, algebra, greenhouse effect) do not indicate concrete concepts but abstract. These subjects cannot be understood by going through only a dictionary definition but rather a complete consideration of the courses is required.

Another kind of abstract entities includes those that are specific to social institutions such as the medicine, many of which can be found in a doctor’s conference discussing a special case (e.g., decreased size of tumour in an AVM patient, atherosclerosis in coronary arteries, cerebrovascular accident in a hypertensive patient, deep venous thrombosis in a chronically bedridden patient). These are the examples of terms used by doctors in a medical profession. A third kind of entities are those which include abstractions attributed to semiotic entities – language and its features (magazines, questions, text) Language as a semiotic system says that a single sign or an element take its overall meaning from how it is combined with other signs. Cultural analysts go beyond language to look at all aspects of the society as systems of signs. Different cultures have different semiotic systems as they are a representation of the conventions of that particular culture keeping in view that traditions vary from one culture to another. Semiotic entities are more particularly found in areas like linguistics. A fourth type of abstraction deals with the aspects of meaning like the terms that are employed under taxonomic relations (e.g., kind, class, type, way). These are the generic entities and appear in all fields, yet distinguished fields have their own generic entities like clause, genre, structure.

In addition, there is are third kind of entities called metaphoric entities either derived from processes (e.g., love, divorce, disgrace, embarrassment) and those derived from qualities (e.g. honesty, perfection, sharpness, virtue, sincerity).

 

Data Interpretation and Discussion

The following sections account a detailed discussion on the annotated texts.




 

Project:	Transitivity-ct3
Counting:	local
Unit:	Transitivity: transitivity
Date:	Tues March 25 21:09:27 2014
Feature		N	Percent
Element		N=1392
		34.60%	482
Process
Participant		43.56%	606
Circumstance		21.84%	304
Process-type		N=490
Material		13.14%	64
Mental		18.17%	89
Verbal		42.05%	206
Relational		23.35%	115
Behavioral		0.90%	4
Existential		2.39%	12

Figure

Descriptive Statistics: Transitivity Features



In this section the result of the transitivity analysis (Halliday and Matthiessen 2014) in the headlines of the selected newspapers; The News, Nation and Dawn has been presented. Transitivity is a Hallidayan concept which refers to the construction of meanings in a clause. “Transitivity patterns allow us to know how meanings are encoded about the world and more specifically how we experience the meanings and how we perceive the happenings around us” (ibid, p.226). This section presents the findings of the transitivity analysis (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2014). It gives a detailed description of the processes in which the participants engage most frequently and the roles in which they are involved followed by a conclusion at the end of the section.

The present study has not undertaken a syntactic and formal criterion but rather deals with critical and semantic/conceptual notions. For the purpose of the deducing logical conclusions the discussion will be made in the next sections of this paper. The Table3 given above gives the complete picture of the transitivity process types in the corpus including the three newspapers. The Table shows the overall process types in the corpus comprise 482 (34.60%) and participants involved with those process types are 606 (43.56%) and finally, the ‘Circumstances’ appear as 304 (21.84%). In addition, the corpus shows that the most frequent process type in headline analysis is verbal which comprises the 42.05% of the total percentage then the next ration appears in the case of relational process types i.e., 23.35%.

The third fairly large proportion in the data is of mental clauses accumulating to 18.17% which by default show the participants projecting their thoughts (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004) and the fourth from in the descending order are of material clauses which represent the concrete actions. We also find a very few occurrences of the ‘Existential’ and ‘Behavioural’ clauses in the data. The process type figures in the given graph have been reflected in proportion because there is some variation in the number of clauses of each newspaper headlines selected for the analysis. The total number has been marked by ‘N’. The Table also shows that all the headlines primarily involve verbal actions because politicians have been shown involved in the act of negating, condemning and explaining the issue. As per their choice is concerned, they expose the inner consciousness to the outer world (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2014).

For example,

   i.            “///Zardari had no knowledge of memo [verbiage]: Ijaz [sayer]///”

“// Zardari [carrier] had [pr: rel; attributive] no knowledge of memo” [attribute]

[Dawn November 21, 2011].

We can see from the example 1 that most of the time a headline is an elaborated wording of the saying of a powerful person in politics. Further, we can work out for the other related process types which really construe dynamic world of reality. For instance, ‘Relational’ clauses help in describing and identifying the memo. To summarise, transitivity analysis shows that the verbal clauses are in overwhelming proportion but the other process types are not as much as were expected.   In addition, the data reveals that the individual participants are not only addressed by their own names but instead metaphorically as well which have been discussed in the following section in detail.

On the similar grounds, Haqqani is being addressed in the same way: For example, in the following headline:




 

Table 3. Transitivity Analysis of the Selected Newspapers

 

Process Type	N:178 Dawn	N: 163 The News	N:149 The Nation
Material	11.14%	13.74%	14.54%
Mental; perception	04.23%	2.16%	03.84%
Mental; emotion	03.42%	3.49%	01.38%
Mental; cognition	09.40%	7.13%	05.69%
Mental; desideration	02.37%	1.34%	04.37%
Verbal	41.70%	37.19%	47.28%
Relational; attributive	17.31%	23.60%	16.85%
Relational; identifying	07.12%	08.67%	04.36%
Behavioral	01.23%	01.49%	0.00%
Existential	02.08%	01.19%	1.69%




Transitivity Findings in the Daily Dawn

The present transitivity findings show that the participants are engaged in ‘Verbal’ processes most frequently with 41.70% which are the processes of saying, next following ‘Mental’ processes with 19.42% which are the processes of sensing or experiencing including sub-types as perception, emotion, desideration, cognition. For mental clauses a large proportion is of ‘Mental’ cognition clauses because the participants are shown reflecting their mental thoughts. Next come ‘Relational’ attributive processes which are the processes of being and having with 17.31%. After relational attributive comes material processes with 11.14%, following ‘Relational’ identifying with 07.12%, next comes existential which are the processes of existence with 02.08% and at last is behavioural processes which are the psychological processes with 01.23% - a kind of negligible percentage.

From the percentage it is observed that the major transitivity clauses in which the participants are involved are the verbal ones (41.70%). The large number of verbal process types is not surprising because the newspaper headlines portray the sayings. For example, 

 ii.            “Memogate storm: US [sayer] affirms [pr: verbal] support [ verbiage] for democracy [circ: cause]” [Dawn November 20, 2011].

Second, we have ‘Mental’ processes. Almost 19.42% of the processes dominate the ‘Mental’ process types of cognition, perception, emotion and desideration. For example,

iii.            ///“Washington lackey’ Haqqani [senser] fears [pr: emotion][for life [circ: purpose]”/// [The Nation January 05, 2012].

The next major type of processes is relational attributive. For examples,

iv.            “///Zardari had no knowledge of memo [verbiage]: Ijaz [sayer]///”

      “//Zardari [carrier] had [pr: rel; attributive] no knowledge of memo [attribute]” [Dawn November 25, 2011].

Next process type is ‘Material’ processes which involve processes of doing or happening in which an actor does something. For instance

  v.            “Nawaz [actor] issues [pr: material] ultimatum [scope] on memo probe [circ: location]” [Dawn November 25, 2011].

At last, we see existential and behavioural processes which are quite insignificant. To summarise, it is observed that the percentage of verbal processes is quite significant as compared to the other process types which verbalise the inner consciousness. The other significant category is of mental clauses which involve the participants in processes of thinking, desiring, wants and needs; therewith people’s perceptions are involved. After this we have ‘Relational’ attributive and material processes followed by the other as mentioned above.

The News Findings

Data from ‘The News’ shows somehow different results, a slight difference exists in the percentage of the process types frequencies. The major process types in The News are ‘Verbal’ clauses with a total 37.19%, next relational attributive processes are second with 23.60%, following mental processes with 14.12%. After ‘Mental’ processes are ‘Material’ clauses with 13.74%, following relational identifying processes with 08.67% and next comes ‘Behavioral’ processes with 01.49%. At the last, is ‘Existential’ process type with 01.19%.

The following example shows demonstration of a verbal process type.

   i.            “Presidency [sayer] denies being [pr: verbal] behind memo [circ: location]” [The News November 25, 2011].

Amongst the ‘Mental’ processes we have processes of cognition at the highest followed by emotion, perception and desideration. After mental we have relational identifying processes. Unexpectedly, ‘Behavioral’ and ‘Existential’ processes show a low percentage.

 

Findings of the Nation

Data analysis of The Nation demonstrates very clearly that the highest percentage is of the ‘Verbal’ processes with a total of 47.28%, followed by ‘Relational’ attributive processes with 16.85%, next comes mental processes with 15.28%. After ‘Mental’ processes come material processes with 14.54%, next in line are ‘Relational’ identifying processes with 04.36%, followed by ‘Existential’ process types with 1.69%. Surprisingly, we do not have any behavioral process types in the data.

    ii.         “Zardari, Haqqani [senser] knew [pr: mental] about OBL raid [circ: matter]”

[the Nation December 11, 2011].

Summing up the transitivity findings, it is observed that there is a marked affluence of ‘Verbal’ processes in all the three newspapers, with even the highest in The Nation with 47.28%, next in Dawn being 41.70% and lastly in The News being 37.19%. This indicates that the inner consciousness of the participants is revealed to a far greater extent in the present data.

The next, we have ‘Relational’ processes which comprise a total of 23.35%, which is the highest in The News 32.27%, next in Dawn 24.43% and last in The Nation, 21.21%. ‘Relational’ process types help in identifying and describing the roles that participants possess. After the relational, we have ‘Mental’ with a total 18.17% in the three leading newspapers. Mental process types are highest in Dawn with 19.42%, next in The Nation 15.28% and lastly in The News 14.12%. ‘Mental’ process types are an insight into the participants’ thinking, emotions, wanting and desires. Next comes, ‘Material’ process types with a total 13.14%, being the highest in The Nation 14.54%, next in The News 13.74% and last in Dawn 11.14%. ‘Material’ process types reveal the activities in which the participants are being engaged. Lastly, come the ‘Existential’ and ‘Behavioral’ processes which are found almost negligible, with only 2.39% and 0.90% respectively. The unexpectedly low percentage of the both ‘Behavioral’ and ‘Existential’ processes indicates that the participants of the present study are not found engaged in the psychological activities of existence. The ‘Existential’ processes are found to some extent especially highest in Dawn 02.08%, next in The Nation 01.69% and lastly in The News 01.19%.

 

Deploying Transitivity Concordances

By deploying transitivity concordances, I intend to explore which of the stakeholders employed through entities has been assigned more frequent roles in the transitivity pattern. In this connection, this is worth mentioning that I particularly strive to investigate the construal of political identity of the main stakeholders – the government, ex-ambassador to the US and the opposition. The transitivity concordances of the three newspapers namely The News, the Nation and Dawn have been presented here to support further argument comparatively.

The respective findings of the concordances show that The News shows affiliation with opposition, whereas, maximum affiliation is being shown for Ex Ambassador by Dawn and results of the concordances for The Nation support the opposition.




 

Table 4. Transitivity Concordances for the Main Stakeholders

	For	The	News	For	Daily	Dawn	For	The	Nation
Roles	Government	Ex-ambassador	Opposition	Government	Ex-ambassador	Opposition	Government	Ex-ambassador	Opposition
Actor -Goal or +Scope	04	03	13	06	05	03	06	03	11
Actor + Goal	05	04	17	02	13	07	05	02	14
Goal	03	07	03	03	02	08	04	05	03
Token	1	3	0	02	11	04	3	1	09
Value	3	2	2	03	06	03	5	6	2
Phenomenon	2	3	0	2	4	01	3	4	0
Assigner/Initiator/ Attributor	3	00	1	2	05	03	2	00	1
Carrier	09	03	17	07	16	09	07	03	19
Scope	2	1	6	03	04	02	2	1	4
Target	4	14	02	4	07	13	16	18	03
Receiver	3	07	5	3	05	16	6	03	05
Senser	4	03	7	8	17	06	4	02	10
Sayer	21	11	34	15	29	12	18	14	41
Behaver	01	00	3	01	02	00	01	00	01
Existent	02	00	01	00	01	01	01	00	01
Beneficiary	03	3	1	03	06	02	03	1	00
Total	70	64	113	62	131	89	86	63	124

 




The Table: 2 shows the frequency roles employed to different stakeholders under the given categories. I have focused on the portrayal of the government, ex ambassador and the opposition, and the results are very interesting. For instance, the major roles in which the main entities have been portrayed are actor, goal, target, senser, sayer and carrier and the minor roles include initiator, assigner, scope, behavior and the existent.  Now referring to the individual portrayal, the most frequent stakeholder in The News is the opposition and the opposition appeared most frequently as the sayer, carrier, goal and the actor. In many clauses the opposition leaders have been shown threatening, criticizing and condemning the act of writing the memo. For example,

     iii.            ///“Nawaz [sayer] demands [pr: verbal] MPs, judges panel to probe memo [verbiage]”///

//“MPs, judges panel [actor] to probe [pr: material] memo [goal]”

 [The News November    19, 2011]

Here, the then PML-N leader has been portrayed as urging for the probe. This is noticeable the ‘sayer’ is as much as twice as any other entity in the transitivity portrayal.  This is also very interesting to note that the then Prime Minister has also been portrayed like others in verbal clauses demanding the amicable solution of the Memogate scandal as in the following.

iv.            “Gilani [sayer] pledges [pr: verbal] memo probe [verbiage] at ‘highest level’ [circ: location]” [The News November 25, 2011].

Besides this, the stakeholders have also been portrayed as the actors. For example,

  v.             “Army, govt [actor] poles [pr: material] apart [resulting attribute] on memo [circ:reason]”[the Nation December 16, 2011].

This is a noticeable perspective in the transitivity concordances that all the stakeholders have been deployed as actors though in a low ratio but interestingly, the ruling have been deployed in a negative connotation of having being suffered. For example, the example (x) shows, because of this memo there generated a confidence gap between Pakistan People Party government and Pakistan Army. 

Evidently in the data, the three stakeholders are presented through all the transitivity roles except having no or negligible proportion for Behaver, existent, receiver, scope and causative roles. However, I found 'Sayer', ‘actor’, goal’, ‘target’, 'Carrier', and 'Senser', worth identifying. Also, the stakeholders are presented as ‘sayer’ because by default news headlines are the reflections of the political statements of the political leaders.

The newspapers have given a fairly large representation to the opposition. I found 113 occurrences in The News, 86 in daily Dawn and 124 in the Nation for the portrayal of the opposition. From the data, I can say that the Nation has assigned maximum roles then The News and third on the order is Dawn. At this point, I would mention that the Nation is known to having developed its strong political affiliation with the then opposition – Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz group) therefore, this is acceptable if they had assigned maximum roles to the opposition in their news reporting. For example,

vi.            “Unmoved [pr: material] PPP [actor] adopts [pr: material] wait-and-see policy [goal]” [the Nation December 22, 2011].

Very interestingly, the newspaper assigned dynamic role to the government official just to portray their helpless position over the issue as in (xvi) where the negotiation between the two high-ups had resulted in a future fury.

 vii.         “Nawaz Sharif [actor] (is) dragging [pr: material] judiciary [goal] into politics [circ: location]: Babar” [The News November 21, 2011].

In the above example (xvii) The News has given different perspective while assigning the opposition an active role as he was suspected to drag judiciary into politics in order to meet his implicit agenda. Secondly, I would see the portrayal of the then Pakistan Ambassador to the US and this is very interesting to note that Dawn has assigned maximum transitivity roles equal to 131. Then the second on the order is the Nation after that we find The News. Theoretically, speaking Dawn is known to having developed Pro-American agenda (Tehseem, 2014). For example,

viii.          “Mullen did not believe memo was from Zardari [verbiage]: Pentagon [sayer]”

 / “memo [token] was [pr: rel; identifying] from Zardari” [circ: location]

[Dawn November 22, 2011].

In the above example, the issue has been highlighted in the perspective of the Americans as they were hiding the facts and shielding the government. On the other hand, the Nation has shown Haqqani in a weaker position who is struggling to save his grace. In fact, here the choice of the lexis is very loaded that because of the Memogate Scandal the former envoy had lost his repute and now was doing hard efforts to having a safe exit – see the example below.

  ix.         “Haqqani [actor] struggles [pr: material] to save [pr: material] grace [goal]”

[the Nation November 21, 2011].

Lastly, I will discuss the roles assigned to the government as a major stakeholder in this scandal. The data shows that the Nation has assigned maximum roles 86 to the government then comes The News with 70 roles and lastly Dawn by assigning 62 transitivity roles. The interesting question is that the Nation has assigned maximum roles to both the opposition and government. The main finding that I have come up with so far is that it has portrayed government in negative connotation that it has been shown helpless in the matter as in the following examples.

    x.         /// “PM [carrier] would be [pr: rel; attributive] responsible [attribute] if Haqqani [goal] found [pr: material] involve [resulting attribute] in memo scandal [circ: location] : Mukhtar [sayer]”/// [the Nation November 20, 2011].

The News has given second highest percentage of the government roles. In such cases, the government officials have been assigned roles to show their compliance in certain matters as in the following.

  xi.         “PM [senser] accepts [pr: mental; cognition] Haqqani’s resignation [phenomenon], orders [pr: verbal] probe [target] into memo [circ: location]”[The News November 23, 2011].

Transitivity concordances can help deduce very interesting patterns Dawn assigns more transitivity roles to the ambassador so presents the issue from his perspective and the Nation gives more focus to the opposition while The News also reports on the opposition.  The opposition gets more dynamic roles. This is partially because in political discourse left-wing view always attracts the readership. Based on the data, I have explored the news reporting of all three main stakeholders in relation the transitivity roles assigned to them. However, it is very important to explore deeper portrayal by applying the cline dynamism proposed by Hasan (1985-89) in order to strengthen the empirical deductions. 

Applying the Cline of Dynamism

This is an effort to work-out the degree of dynamism for the transitivity roles assigned to the stakeholders in the data. The main focus of using the cline of dynamism is to explore that which of the participant is more dynamic than the others in its assigned roles and to what extent it dynamically impacts others and the other way round. The following figures show the dynamism scores by employing the framework proposed in Thompson (2008). The scores have been calculated by weighting them in terms of positive or negative roles in accordance to the bands drawn.




 

Table 5. Role Dynamism Scores in Dawn

Band		Weighting	Government		Ex-Ambassador		Opposition
			no.	Score	no.	Score	no.	Score
1	Assigner/Initiator/Attributor	3	2	06	05	10	03	09
2	Actor +Goal	2	02	04	13	26	07	14
3	Actor  -Goal and/or +Scope, Phenomenon (subject), Behaver, Sayer, Senser	1	35	35	61	36	24	24
4	Token, Carrier, Value, Existent	0	12	00	33	00	16	00
5	Beneficiary, Phenomenon (Complement), Scope	-1	08	-08	14	-14	05	-5
6	Goal	-2	03	-06	02	-06	08	-16
	Total		62	31	128	52	63	26

 

Table 6. Role Dynamism Scores in the News

Band		Weighting	Government		Ex-Ambassador		Opposition
			no.	Score	no.	Score	no.	Score
1	Assigner/Initiator/Attributor	3	3	9	00	00	2	6
2	Actor +Goal	2	05	10	04	08	17	24
3	Actor  -Goal and/or +Scope, Phenomenon (subject), Behaver, Sayer, Senser	1	24	24	29	29	51	51
4	Token, Carrier, Value, Existent	0	17	0	14	0	20	0
5	Beneficiary, Phenomenon (Complement), Scope	-1	09	-09	12	-11	20	-20
6	Goal	-2	03	-06	07	-14	03	-6
	Total		61	28	66	12	113	55

 

Table 7. Role Dynamism Scores in the Nation

Band		Weighting	Government		Ex-Ambassador			Opposition
			no.	Score	no.	Score	no.		Score
1	Assigner/Initiator/Attributor	3	02	06	00	00	01		03
2	Actor +Goal	2	05	10	02	04	14		28
3	Actor  -Goal and/or +Scope, Phenomenon (subject), Behaver, Sayer, Senser	1	32	32	23	23	63		63
4	Token, Carrier, Value, Existent	0	16	00	10	00	30		00
5	Beneficiary, Phenomenon (Complement), Scope	-1	22	-22	06	-06	04		-04
6	Goal	-2	04	-08	05	-10	03		-06
	Total		81	18	46	11	115		84

 




According to the data shown, this is very interesting to point out that the newspapers reflect almost the similar patterns in assigning dynamic roles to the main stakeholders. Therefore, I can infer that opposition is the most dynamic participant in two newspapers – The News and the Nation whereas the ex-ambassador to the US is the most frequent entity in Dawn. This frequency is not surprising because having left-wing reporting always helps The Newspapers to sell their news so assigning dynamic roles to the opposition in two newspapers seems justified. On the other hand, Dawn has assigned the most dynamic roles to the ex-ambassador so this frequency is interesting because in doing so the newspaper has unfolded its affiliation being pro-American and projecting their agenda, see for example, iii. This viewpoint strongly propagates the ideology that the former envoy is being projected strong headed. In addition, the opposition has been assigned transitivity roles on a dynamic scale of six bands. Evidently, this representation suggests that opposition as a whole is given the most vibrant transitivity roles whose statements are affecting the issue. They are shown involved in performing different speech acts like threatening, warning, advising and commenting on the scandal. This is interesting to note that besides being portrayed as actors the opposition has also been shown in causative roles. In this way they are shown in power whose statements can alter the course of political stability as in the following example.

         i.            “Zardari [initiator] has made [pr: material] the country [actor] a bait [attribute] to prolong [-pr: material] his tenure [goal]’, says Nawaz” [The News January 25, 2012].

Secondly, the opposition has been assigned more roles as ‘Actor -Goal and/or +Scope’ in the dominating process types and ‘Sayer’ in the default format of the newspaper headlines. Now coming to the presentation of Ex-Pakistan Ambassador to the US, it is very obvious from the cline of dynamism that Dawn has assigned more dynamic roles to the ambassador. In the transitivity of the participant analysis all the newspapers have assigned somehow dynamic roles particularly Dawn which has assigned maximum roles on the six band scale. The maximum roles assigned are; ‘Actor’, ‘Sayer’, ‘Carrier’, ‘Token’. These roles fit in the middle of the band score which are characterized middle vibrant roles on the band scale. Interestingly, the ex-ambassador has been observed to have been targeted in the whole representation along with the then president of Pakistan.

Now I would like to report on the representation of the government on the band scale. The data shows that the Nation has assigned comparatively more dynamic roles on the band scale equal to 81 and the other two are also showing same score. Pragmatically, I can say that both the ex-ambassador and the government are representing the same entities. In fact, politically ambassadors are the right-wing affiliates of any government. Their stance always reflects the voice of the power corridors and their utmost duty includes safeguarding the government’s interests on a larger level.  

To this point, I have made it clear that different newspapers have different perspective on the Memogate Scandal so they have presented likewise. To make it brief I will now highlight interesting inferences and deductions based on the data and this would, of course, help in reaching some reasonable conclusions.

1.        Theoretically speaking, the differences between the newspapers’ affiliations and stance can be deduced in terms of transitivity roles assigned to the stakeholders based on the concordances shown above.

2.       Based on my findings, I can justify that both The News and the Nation has reported the issue from the opposition perspective and the Dawn from the former envoy’s perspective. 

3.        The News and the Nation has portrayed more dynamic the opposition whereas Dawn presents government perspective.

4.       So far, I have reported differences in the portrayal of different entities. Now, I will state some similarities. The newspapers have given nearly equal importance and weightage to the three stakeholders in focus. They are given very dynamic roles liker –er as in ‘Actor’, ‘Sayer’, ‘Senser’ etc. and –ed roles like ‘Goal’, ‘Phenomenon’, ‘Carrier’ etc.  For example, if we count government and the ex-ambassador as one entity, we would find almost an equal percentage or slightly greater than the opposition in three selected newspapers.

5.       On the role of dynamism 'Actor –Goal/or, + Scope’, ‘Phenomenon, Sayer and Senser’ have been assigned greater roles in the transitivity accumulatively. This portrayal shows that the stakeholders have been shown vibrant and dynamic. The primary process types include verbal, material, relational, mental’. Surprisingly, ‘Actor + Goal’ score appear lesser than other roles but this makes a sense because much of  the news reporting deals with the consequences of the disputed letter.

 

Kinds of Entities: The Construal of Political Identity

By observing the data, it can be noticed that significant linguistic devices are being employed including metaphors, concrete and abstract entities. The texts are found having reiterated with numerous examples of the metaphoric expressions for the main stakeholders implying significant ideological implications and construal of political identities.

From Daily Dawn

The data reveals that Asif Ali Zardari is being mentioned metaphorically as President or Presidency for twenty-one times. Similarly, Hussain Haqqani has been referred to as Ambassador for seventeen times, whereas Nawaz Sharif has been mentioned metaphorically as PML-N leader for only seven times. There is a marked difference within the portrayal of the three stakeholders which hold important ideological implications. For example, 

1.        Ambassador Husain Haqqani twice met President Asif Ali Zardari at the presidency on Sunday [Dawn November 21, 2011]

2.       Former envoy challenges SC decision. [Dawn December 12, 2011]

3.        President to submit reply in memo case. [Dawn December 14, 2011]

Hence, it can be observed from of the afore-mentioned examples that the categories are not simply people and their qualities but implies a complete institutional abstraction. The metaphorical construe his political identity. Grammatical metaphors involve transference of meaning from one kind of element to another kind (Halliday, 1998). A general drift in meaning in grammatical metaphors is noticed from reality as processes involving proper and concrete things to reality as relations between abstract things (Martin and Rose, 2007).

 

From the Nation

The Nation addresses the stakeholders metaphorically. Mr. Zardari appears thirteen times, Mr. Haqqani for eight times and Mr. Nawaz appears only once. It shows the least preference towards the opposition and maximum towards the government.

1.        Husain Haqqani, former ambassador to Washington, fears he will be murdered if he leaves his sanctuary in the Prime Minister’s House.[The Nation January 05, 2012]

2.       PML-N came down hard on ruling coalition on the secret memo saga. [The Nation November 19, 2011]

 

From the News

In The News, Mr Haqqani appears twenty-two times, Mr. Nawaz Sharif as PML-N leader for seventeen times and Mr Zardari as the President for sixteen times. The use metaphors is being naturalized in the text unless for readers to demystify the text for ideological assumptions. For example,

   i.            President Asif Ali Zardari has said, ‘he will accept the Parliamentary Committee on the memo issue’ [The News January 07, 2012].

By placing Mr Zardari’s name in the first place means The News has given prime importance to the President. Whereas, Mr Nawaz Sharif is addressed by his name, no adjective or no metaphoric expression is used for him. This is a clear indication towards the President group so are the different linguistic strategies which journalists employ to attract the readers. Metaphor in general involves transference of meaning in which a lexical item that normally means one thing comes to mean another (Martin and Rose, 2007, p.109).  Other examples are given below in which the metaphoric usage of the three entities can be traced.

 ii.            “Hashmi urges president, PM to resign” [The News November 20, 2011].

To sum up, the study has found very interesting environment of the choice of entities for the stakeholders who have been deployed through metonymic as well as metaphoric expressions. For example, president, the presidency, president Asif Ali Zardari, Ambassador Haqqani, former envoy, former ambassador to the US, etc. These patterns show that the government officials have been identified with their political affiliations, by the virtue of their office and status. On the other hand, the opposition has been identified mostly by their names like Imran, Nawaz Sharif etc. 

Concluding Remarks

Although the headlines from the different newspapers exhibit a comparable construal of political identity but significant differences occur in how the they portray their stance and ideology, and how they construe the political identity of the main stakeholders. The subjective choice of the journalists appears throughout the headlines. The journalist’s choice of the lexis; ‘shaken’ or ‘the prophets of doom’ implicitly shows their stance that how the consequences of the scandal have put pressures on the PPP leadership which was pretending to be unmoved so this choice has particularly put them on a weaker ground. Also, in the following headline by using the lexical choice affirms shows the newspaper’s pro-American agenda in portraying their point of view. 

iii. “US affirms support for democracy” [Dawn November 21, 2011].

On subjectivity, journalists disseminate partiality and affiliations through certain choices. Therefore, the study has reported that certain lexical choices, metaphors and transitivity patterns employed are the part of discursive strategies through which the journalists construct different political identities. For example, the use of war-like lexis like threatening, ultimatum and struggling hard shows that The News has presented opposition aggressive. 

Some of the above stated dimensions of the choices – for example how the main stakeholders have been named as participants and entities identify their political construal. This also applies to the strategies how the participants are portrayed centralized or the marginalised entities and how the agency is distributed and obfuscated, and how the information flow is managed across the news reports. 

Summing up, the corpus shows that the Nation and The News have employed more dynamic roles to the opposition so they are recognized as promoting the left-wing agenda but on the other hand, Dawn has given more space to the ex-ambassador so is found to propagating pro-American agenda. To support my deduction, the discursive strategies applied by the newspapers unfold their implicit point of view and ideology especially the kind of entities that have been employed reflect the discursive strategies deployed covertly in the construal of political identity. For example, the President has been identified such as, apex office, and as a strong-headed politician whereas, the ex-Pakistan ambassador to the US has been identified in relation to different portfolios – as an ambassador, a vibrant diplomat, a dynamic person, as a Pakistan People Party affiliate or a strong-headed diplomat. On the other hand, opposition has been identified more with their personal capacities as the least impacting entity. 

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