Examining Pakistani news media discourses about China–Pakistan Economic Corridor: A corpus-based critical discourse analysis

The paper examines the construction of China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) through corpus-based critical discourse analysis of news in the Pakistani press. Overall, Pakistani newspapers show China as a slogan of “brotherhood” and a stereotype of China’s relationship as an “ironic bond” between China and Pakistan. The analysis reveals that a bulk of friendly and positive discourses about China have been constructed in the Pakistani media reports. The role of discourses pertinent to the ideological construction of image of China’s mega economic project Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and CPEC is discussed. However, a deeper insight into the lexical choices of newspapers also suggests that plenty of intricacies and sensitivities are existent in issues pertaining to CPEC and BRI.