Amsler, MMeyerhoff, MSultana, Kishwer2014-06-2920142014http://hdl.handle.net/2292/22352Contemporary social changes associated with globalisation, New Capitalism and postmodernity have led to hybridization of societies all over the world (Fairclough, 2003) including Pakistan. Theses social changes shape many contemporary discourses, including commercial advertising. This thesis investigates how language mixing and multiliteracies are deployed in Pakistani commercial advertising in print and digital formats. Mixed varieties of English and Urdu are emerging in Pakistan as markers of modernity and middle-class status especially among younger members of Pakistan society. This thesis deploys Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and theories of language contact to analyse commercial print and digital advertisement from three daily English and three daily Urdu newspapers published in Pakistan. These advertisements are analysed at micro (phrase and clause) and macro level (discourse) levels to show how language mixing in advertising is constructing versions of modernity and cultural hybridity. The analyses show that that print and digital commercial advertising discourse is complex and hybrid at various levels and across different linguistic categories. Pakistani advertising discourse is hybrid, complex and mixed at the levels of word, phrase and clause in terms of mixing English words and grammar with Urdu words and grammar and by representing English in Roman and Urdu alphabets. Advertising discourse’s hybrid features are revealed at the macro level in terms of genre mixing and multiliterate constructions of ideal commercial subjects, national subjects and ‘modern’ Pakistanis. The thesis also argues that hybrid and multilingual advertising is helping produce a new hybrid, mixed language in Pakistani public discourse, one which combines English and Urdu and is being frequently used by middle-class people and youth as part of their linguistic constructions and performances of modern Pakistani identities.Items in ResearchSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated. Previously published items are made available in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher.https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/docs/uoa-docs/rights.htmThesisCopyright: The Authorhttp://purl.org/eprint/accessRights/OpenAccessQ112907228