Language of Modernity and Resistance in the chronicles around the Ravi River Front City Planning Project

Abstract

Megacities projects are usually producing competing stories that are manifestations of the conflicting interests between environmental justice and economic growth. This paper looks at the discursive construction of the Ravi River Urban Development Project (RRUDP) in Lahore by using a language of modernity perpetuated by the state institutions and a language of resistance by non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The analysis of official statements and reports by the NGO regarding the same issue based on a corpus-based content analysis shows the prevalent patterns of lexical and thematic inclinations. The analysis is based on Stibbe and stories we live by as well as being operationalised into Critical Discourse Analysis which involves textual features and agency in Fairclough as well as the selections theory of framing by Entman. The results indicate that the discourse of the governments renders RRUDP as an unavoidable development by focusing on urbanization, infrastructure, and economic growth and neglecting ecological and social implications. Contrarily, NGO discourse prefigures the death of the environment, land ownership, and responsibility, making RRUDP a socially and environmentally negative phenomenon. The analysis prominently brings out discourse as one of the avenues of ideological conflict concerning development in Pakistan.