Representation of Pak-Military Efforts in War on Terror in New York Times and Washington Post

This research was a critical study of the discourse used in the American newspapers regarding opinion about Pakistan military efforts in war on terror. So, the purpose of this study was to highlight the representation of Pak military in the discourse. The Qualitative method was engaged to assess the data of the selected content. The data have been collected by simple random sampling from The Washington Post and The New York Times and analyzed by N. Fairclough’s 3D model. Moreover, relevant linguistic tool from the Descriptive stage (1st dimension) were selected. For this, the study used M.K. Halliday’s model of Functional Language to find the relevant linguistic tool to analyze the media discourse. Keeping in focus the main objectives of the study, it only focused on the ideational function of language. The findings revealed that it was through transitivity process and through deliberate choice of lexical material to keep the acts of terrorism active and Pak Military passive in the this regard. The transitivity process showed that Pakistan military role was unsatisfied in its handling of militancy from its soil. The data also turned out to be repeatedly representing particular images of reality through the ideational function of language. Pakistan military administration was taken as submissive in eradicating Islamic fundamentalist. It also revealed the hidden agenda behind such representation that was distorting the image of Islam representing it as promoting militants’ group in the name of religion.