03 Representation of Women: A Corpus Based Critical Discourse Analysis of News Columns of the Daily Dawn

Abstract

In this paper, the differences in the representation of women in male and female writers’ news columns written in the Pakistani daily newspaper Dawn are studied through corpus based critical discourse analysis. For this purpose, two corpora i.e. male journalists’ corpus (MJC) and female journalists’ corpus (FJC) are built. The results show the differences that exist in male and female journalists’ discourses. The male writers’ representation is significantly different from that of female writers. In the male journalists’ writings, women are usually shown more passive either receiving some benefits from the others or receiving some sort of violence or torture. In the male writers’ discussion, active roles of women in Pakistani society are rarely found. In the female journalists’ discourse, on the other hand, active roles of women are more frequent as compared to passive roles.