Marketization Of Higher Education: A Pragma Stylistic Manipulation In Prospectuses’ Discourse Of Pakistani Universities

Abstract

Marketisation of higher educational institutions has become a widespread phenomenon in the competitive environment of academia. The Pakistani private educational sector is also influenced through the global phenomenon of commoditization to earn good reputation among the successors. In this competitive era, Pakistani universities are putting efforts to acquire high ranking among the worldclass universities. The present study aimed to investigate how linguistic features are manipulated to acquire the desired objectives of private universities. In this context, the present study has employed the Black’s pragma stylistic framework (2006) on the introductory part of prospectuses’ discourse for an in-depth understanding of language use and its social context. The qualitative interpretive paradigm has been employed in the present study. The findings revealed that Pakistani universities are massively manipulating the linguistic patterns to persuade the potential students i.e. modifying the language of prospectuses for promotional purposes to grab the maximum number of students. The current study concluded that Pakistani universities have employed marketing practices as a discursive strategy which runs parallel to the global discursive marketisation of academia.