Saying is Doing: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Pakistan Armed Forces’ Press Briefings Responding to Indian Attacks in May 2025

Abstract

The present study intends to examine how the Pakistan Armed Forces made and authorized national discourses by press conferences in the aftermath of the Indian strikes in May 2025. Exchange of hot words and strategical map between India and Pakistan has always been in news. The present study is based on the recent exchange of press releases on both sides in May 2025 when India attacked Pakistan. The study is based on the concepts of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and combines the three- dimensional model of Fairclough (1995) with the socio-cognitive analysis of van Dijk (1998) to understand how structures of language, discursive practices and mind interconnect to create ideological meanings. The data is comprised of ten official press conferences issued by the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) during May 1-15, 2025. Thematic analysis indicates that the discursive strategies that the study recognizes are as follows: legitimization of self-defense, development of national unity, moral positioning and presenting India as an aggressor. The findings show that the discourse of the Armed Forces is not only communicative but also ideological in nature the speech is turned into a type of political action. The linguistic options like modality, metaphor and evaluative adjectives contributed to the maintenance of power, whereas the intertextual distribution of media allowed to maintain the interpretive domination. The analysis concludes that these press briefings were used as the instruments of power and identity construction in which language was a tactical instrument to maintain the legitimacy, influence the thinking of the masses and support the moral and national sovereignty of Pakistan. The study may be used as a base to study and understand the hidden meanings and stance of officials at national and international levels in future. It can further be used to unearth the global narratives of the world leaders in broader perspectives.