A Genre Analysis of Political Text

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to analyse the generic organization of the manifesto of ‘Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) by using Swales’ (1990) ‘Create a Research Space’ (CARS) model. Genre is a sociolinguistic activity that is used for some specific communicative purpose. It tends to be associated more with the ‘organization of culture and social purposes around language’ (Bhatia, 1993; Swales, 1990). Genres are also ‘tied more closely to considerations of ideology and power’ (David YW Lee, 2001). The present paper combines these two approaches in its analysis of the manifesto of (PPP). Manifestoes of the political parties reflect the socially constructed political conventions of a country. Such political texts work to construct and shape the ideology of the people of a country. Genre analysis can be aptly applied to political manifestos because of their close association with power relations and ideology construction. An attempt has been made to present a genre analysis of ‘Pakistan People’s Party Manifesto 2008’ with the view to help the language learners know how genre analysis can benefit them to explore the concepts of ideology and power within language. The paper expects to find that most of the moves of Swales’ CARS’s model are present in the manifesto however these moves do not follow a fix order. The frequency of moves associated with ideology considerations is greater than the other moves which indicate that manifestoes are the genres which can be used to reshape the political ideology of the masses.