A CORPUS-BASED COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF ASSERTIVE STRATEGIES IN PAKISTANI DEMOCRATIC AND DICTATORIAL SPEECHES

Abstract

The present study explores the assertive strategies in Pakistani democratic and dictatorial speeches delivered by Pervez Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto during 1999-2007 in Pakistan and abroad. Fairclough’s model of Critical Discourse Analysis has been used to trace formal properties of basic assertive statements and relationship between speech text and           socio-political context. To meet the objectives of the study, sixteen speeches of Pervez Musharraf with 29744 word tokens and twelve speeches of Benazir Bhutto with 29177 word tokens have been selected following convenient sampling technique. Assertive features including clusters, modality, boosters in assertiveness and key words have been delimited to probe repeated assertiveness in the speeches corpora of both politicians. Quantitative data have been extracted from AntConc (3.2.1). This study reveals that both democratic and dictatorial leaders have used various assertive strategies to present some view, belief and stance. With the corpus analysis, it is found that dictatorial speeches are abounded in multiple assertive strategies of identity, ideology and power whereas the democratic assertiveness comprise solidarity, generalization, and rights.  Democratic assertiveness tends to convey assimilative approach whereas dictatorial assertions are self-restricted and subject to unshared power.