Department of English
Permanent URI for this communityhttps://repository.cuilahore.edu.pk/handle/123456789/19
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Item Political Satire in Pakistani English Newspapers: ACorpus- BasedAnalysis of Humor and Criticism in Editorials (2020– 2024)(Library Information Services, COMSATS University Islamabad, Lahore Campus, 2025) Umaima Harmain Rao; CIIT/SP24-MEL-011/LHR; Dr. Umara Shaheen; LHR TP 10055This study examines the use of political satire and critical discourse in Pakistani English newspaper editorials through a qualitative corpus-based analysis grounded in Incongruity Theory and Gee's Discourse Analysis framework. The corpus consists of 300 editorials (152,815 words) from four leading newspapers: Dawn, The News International, The Express Tribune, and Pakistan Today. Concordance and collocational patterns of twelve high-frequency political keywords-government, state, military, court, election, corruption, political, Sharif, accountability, economy, power, and army-were studied for recurring satirical strategies. The study draws on Incongruity Theory of Humor (Kant; Morreall, 2009) and James Paul Gee’s Discourse Analysis Framework (Gee, 2011) to interpret how satire functions through rhetorical devices such as irony, sarcasm, parody, hyperbole, metaphor, and ridicule. Using concordance lines generated through AntConc, the analysis identifies recurring rhetorical strategies, including irony, exaggeration, metaphor, and evaluative framing, which expose contradictions within political and institutional practices. Gee's notions of situated meaning and Big "D" Discourse are applied to demonstrate how these lexical items acquire context-specific meanings and contribute to broader ideological narratives. At the situated level, institutions are depicted as coercive, inefficient, or selectively accountable, while political actors are constructed through shifting public personas and elite dominance. At the macro level, the editorials collectively reproduce a discourse of democratic fragility, civil-military imbalance, and public mistrust in governance structures. The findings suggest that political satire in Pakistani English editorials functions not merely as humor but as a critical discursive mechanism that challenges institutional authority and highlights systemic failures. By integrating corpus linguistics with discourse and humor theory, this study contributes to understanding how media discourse shapes public perceptions of power, legitimacy, and democratic practice in Pakistan.Item Enhancing ESL Students’ Speaking Fluency and Accuracy with AI-Integrated Learning: An Experimental Study(Library Information Services, COMSATS University Islamabad, Lahore Campus, 2025) Zainab Altaf; CIIT/SP24-MEL-012/LHR; Dr. Umara Shaheen; LHR TP 10056This study explores how integrating AI into learning can enhance English language skills among ESL learners, particularly in speaking. It examines the efficacy of various AI- powered tools that improve the speaking proficiency of ESL students at COMSATS University Lahore Campus. Based on the TPACK framework and Krashen’s Input and Affective Filter hypotheses, this study employs a single-group, mixed-methods embedded experimental design. An eight-week use of integrated AI-based technologies like ChatGPT, TalkPal AI, Speechace, and Smalltalk2Me was carried out at COMSATS. A total of seventeen undergraduate and postgraduate students took a speaking test based on IELTS speaking rubrics before and after the intervention and participated in structured interviews to gauge perceptions of the effectiveness of various AI-powered language learning tools in providing practice in English speaking. Results obviously indicate overall statistical gains in speaking. In particular, improvements are remarkable in areas of fluency, pronunciation, and grammatical accuracy. Qualitative semi-structured interviews revealed that motivation and confidence in practicing English were greater with immediate feedback, provided individually through AI-enabled tools in a low-stress practice environment. These are followed by concrete suggestions as to how language teachers, curriculum designers, and policymakers can apply intelligent technologies as part of planning higher education courses in languages, noticing an improvement in vocabulary learning and in learners' confidence, with a view toward greater access to language-practice opportunities in the general higher-education sphere.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 Stories to Solutions: A Corpus-Assisted Ecolinguistic Analysis of Asian Media Discourse on Climate Change and Global Warming(Library Information Services, COMSATS University Islamabad, Lahore Campus, 2025) Hira Faheem; FA23-REL-011; Dr. Umara Shaheen; LHR TP 9740This study examines how climate change is framed in Asian English-language newspapers through a corpus-assisted ecolinguistic lens. It analyzes media discourse from 2015 to 2024, focusing dominant narratives and frames. The study uses both quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze patterns in media language. It focuses on identifying the linguistic choices and ecological stories that contribute to either constructive or destructive environmental narratives. Five key frames emerge from the data: the agency frame, crisis frames, green growth frame, governance frame, and war frame. These frames reflect underlying ideologies and shape how climate change is communicated across the region. Findings highlight how dominant ecological stories, such as Climate Change is War, Growth is Progress, and Technology Will Save Us, influence public understanding and policy discourse. This research contributes to interdisciplinary climate studies by showing how language can support more balanced, responsible, and ecologically sound communicatioItem 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.