Textual and Rhetoric Analysis of News Headlines of Urdu and English Newspapers

Media discourse is powerful tool of making or breaking the image of any person, event or even idea among masses. Media houses deliberately employ different linguistic, rhetoric and emotional techniques to propagate their ideas in this age of information as well as misinformation. This study attempts to scrutinize print media news headlines by relating how different newspapers show similar event in different ways. The study was exploratory in nature and qualitative methodology was used to determine sample, gather data and further analyze it with narrative interpretations. 06 Pakistani newspapers were selected with equal number of English and Urdu newspapers to determine the sample of the study in form of news headlines. Data was analyzed through the technique of content analysis at textual, discursive and social practice level. Findings divulge that there is significant difference of linguistic and discursive markers among headlines of different newspapers. Certain level of ideology, power and hegemony factors were also found in the news of different newspapers. The apparent reason for using different linguistic and contextual techniques is to create entertainment, sympathy, embarrassment or amusement in the minds of the readers.