Gender Representation in Media Content: A Comparative Critical Discourse Analysis of Pakistani Urdu and English Print Media Outlets

Abstract

By using framework of corpus-assisted Critical Discourse Analysis English and Urdu newspapers are compared in this research that examined gender representation in Pakistani print media. By applying the Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework to investigate linguistic and discursive strategies that employed in construction of gender roles, the research combined qualitative and quantitative methods. The 1440 news corpus consisted of articles published between January 2024 and January 2025 from the four prominent newspapers two English i.e., The News and Dawn and two Urdu i.e., Jang, and Nawa-i-Waqt having three domains: sports, politics, and entertainment. Quantitative analysis CDA offered an interpretive framework to detect underlying ideologies and power relations whereas KH Corder and AntConc identified collocations, frequency patterns and the thematic associations of gendered terms. By using descriptors like emotion, appearance, and domesticity the findings have a significant linguistic asymmetries woman while for men the findings were linked with authority, power, and leadership. English newspapers shown a progressive attitude while that of Urdu newspapers enforced the traditional patriarchal norms firmly. In linguistic media with variations in intensity and framing, the research argued that language served as a site ideological reproduction. In bilingual discourse across the non-Western contexts, this research contributed to feminist media by filling a critical gap. In Pakistan, it presented the evidence of how the gendered identities were formed within the print media. the results have implications for policymakers, academics and media practitioners who strived equal for the media representation.