A Corpus-assisted Study of Linguistic Features of Pakistani English Newspaper Headlines

Abstract

This study attempts to uncover the ideology of journalists and the image of Pakistani Media by examining the linguistic features of headlines related to keywords of Covid, Afghanistan, Facebook, harassment, and the Sialkot tragedy. Headlines on different topics are selected like sports, political, national, and international topics from The Dawn and The Express Tribune from August to December 2021 to create the corpus. To derive frequencies, AntConc 3.5.8 corpus analysis software was used, followed by Fairclough's (1995) three-dimensional model based on three stages of description, interpretation, and explanation. The findings revealed that adjectives, modal verbs, grammatical features, and positive and negative lexical items are employed by journalists in headlines to draw readers' attention and encourage them to read the complete story.