Department of English
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Item VISUALIZING MISOGYNY: A CORPUS ASSISTED MULTIMODAL ANALYSIS OF ONLINE ABUSE AND DENIGRATION(2025) Hira Fayyaz; FA23-REL-012; Dr. Umara Shaheen; LHR TP 9741Internet memes, as an increasingly prevalent medium of online communication, often carry hidden ideological content. This study investigates how misogynistic ideologies are encoded and disseminated through these memes, addressing a research gap across feminist media studies and computational discourse analysis by focusing on Reddit memes from Western and Pakistani social media contexts. Drawing on Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA) and intersectionality theory, the research employs a corpus-assisted multimodal discourse analysis framework to examine gendered content in memes. A dataset of roughly 1,800 memes is compiled and classified via optical character recognition (OCR) and large language models into thematic categories such as shaming, stereotyping, objectification, and violence. The methodology integrates natural language processing for textual analysis with LLM‘s vision capabilities for visual content analysis, thereby capturing both verbal and visual elements. Multimodal classification uncovers how humor and visual rhetoric mask misogynistic messages, facilitating their normalization. Key findings reveal that memes often leverage humor, irony, and culturally specific imagery to disguise abuse and ridicule, yet underlying themes of gendered denigration remain consistent across samples. Cross-cultural comparison identifies both global consistencies in sexist memes and local specificities shaped by cultural norms and x intersectional identities. By highlighting these patterns of encoded misogyny in everyday digital content, the study elucidates how online humor and imagery perpetuate sexist ideologies. This research contributes to feminist media studies, digital discourse analysis, and automated misogyny detection by illuminating covert mechanisms of online gendered abuse and proposing a methodology for analyzing multimodal hate content in digital media discourse.Item Unveiling Gendered Perceptions of Leadership: A Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis of Academic Department Leaders' Narratives(Library Information Services, COMSATS University Islamabad, Lahore Campus, 2025) Farah Naseem; FA23-REL-007; Dr. Umara Shaheen; LHR TP 9737Gender differences in academic leadership in Pakistan are prevalent and are generally attributed to institutional biases and broader societal norms. While more women pursue higher education, they remain underrepresented in leadership positions. Besides women's professional advancement, this gender disparity also influences the narratives in academic leadership. It repeatedly reiterates conventional views that connect determination and power with masculinity (Ahmed, 2018; UNESCO, 2024). Several studies confirmed that gendered perspectives have a strong impact on the consideration of leadership attributes. Particularly, it happens in patriarchal academic settings (Khan, 2020; Malik, 2019).Item Unveiling the Uncanny: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of The Simpsons’ Predictions Manifesting into Reality(Library Information Services, COMSATS University Islamabad, Lahore Campus, 2025) Assia Khanam; FA23-REL-003; Dr. Umara Shaheen; LHR TP 9734This research aims to investigate how the Disney animated TV series The Simpsons utilizes multimodal elements (such as visual images and linguistic choices) to construct humor and sociopolitical satire, making connections with real-life events that are particularly perceived as predictions. The study employs a qualitative research design to explore strange predictions in The Simpsons that have creepily materialized into reality. The researcher employs purposive sampling to select the ten key episodes of The Simpsons, focusing on their relevance, cultural impact, and humor. The analysis focuses on scenes in which these real-life predictions align with reality. The study employs Kress and Van Leeuwen's (2006) Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) to examine the series of underlying narratives and motifs, exploring how these multimodal elements in popular culture reflect real-world events. Extensive scholarly works have been conducted on the multimodal discourse analysis of cartoons; however, a significant gap remains in the context of The Simpsons. The theoretical frameworks of Kress and van Leeuwen's modal (2006) and Halliday's meta-function contribute to the discussion of how fiction can so closely relate to reality. By focusing on visual structure, Interaction, and compositional meanings, Kress and van Leeuwen's (2006) modal facilitates an in-depth analysis of how The Simpsons encode complex social and political messages through its interplay of various semiotic modes. The conclusion highlights the significant role media plays in reflecting and shaping societal discourse, urging critical awareness of the implications embedded within popular cultural texts.Item Apartheid in the Holy Land: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Israel's Treatment of Palestinians(Library Information Services, COMSATS University Islamabad, Lahore Campus, 2025) Aasma Younas; FA23-REL-001; Dr. Umara Shaheen; LHR TP 9732The Israel-Palestine war is one of the bloodiest or longest-running conflicts in modern history. Scholars and political commentators had often critiqued the language used in the media to portray this conflict (Ackerman, 2001; Mearsheimer & Walt, 2006). The research objective was to examine recurrent linguistic patterns of representation and bias in the online news media coverage of Muslim-majority and non-Muslim-majority media outlets concerning the Israel-Palestine conflict. Existing studies in applied linguistics had thoroughly investigated the recurrent linguistic patterns used to depict conflict in the media through critical discourse analysis (CDA) and comparative corpus-assisted discourse studies. This research bridged the gap by applying Van Dijk’s Ideological Square model (2017) as a systematic and theoretical framework in relation to the Israel-Palestine conflict in selected media outlets from Muslim-majority and non-Muslim-majority countries. The study focused on Dawn, Al-Jazeera, CNN, and BBC news media outlets from 2023 to 2025. CDA emphasizes how ideology and power are expressed and contested through dialect in political and social contexts. This research signified lay in its promise to expand the reader’s interpretations of how media narratives influenced public perceptions of Israel as an out-group and Palestine as an in-group. These tactics included polarization, concretization, compassion moves, lexicalization, victimization, and metaphor. Depicting Israel as a victim strengthened positive sense of ‘self’ and constructed a negative image of the Palestinian’s. The media’s relentless portrayal Israeli victimized, which focuses on the mental states of Israel, created a common perception and shared understanding of the state as harass. Media portrayal played a significant role in de-legitimating and legitimating social movements and their adherents. Advocates suggested that "appropriate techniques from CL could help strengthen the rigor of the analysis and then use computational approaches for both qualitative and quantitative analyses of natural text patterns" (Stubbs, 1997, p. 12). Two corpora, totaling 1 million words, were analyzed using the Sketch Engine tool. The Sketch Engine identified corpus-based keyword techniques and corpus tools, such as frequency, concordance, and collocation. This study focused on the Israel-Palestine conflict by compiling two corpora from online news media and interpreting them through Van Dijk’s (1998b) lens.