Abstract

This article investigates how intertextuality in media discourse works as an ideological catalyst. It explores how discursivity and intertextuality in media discourse permeate all levels of society and shape the social and political ideologies of the readers. Media discourse producers are both politicians and reporters. The article investigates how they use language as a manipulating tool. The article also discovers how intertextuality is created in media discourse by clipping specific linguistic elements of different discourses and then forging them together for effect. Four Pakistani English daily newspapers have been analyzed which were selected through non-probability sampling method. The study is qualitative in nature and spreads over six months that is from March 2013 to August 2013. The tenets of critical discourse analysis (CDA) were employed as the main research tool. For understanding the linguistic aspects, Fairclough’s (1995) idea of texts and genres was used and for interpreting the contextual use of language, Halliday’s ideas of field, tenor and mode were incorporated. The analyses revealed how politicians as well as reporters instill tacit ideas into the minds of their addressees which blur and downplay their thinking pattern and entice them to think and behave the way these discourse producers want them to.

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