Unveiling Silenced Voices: A Discursive Study of Narrative of Oppressed Women of Balochistan

Abstract

The main objective of this research is to investigate the construction of women’s oppression in the socio-cultural context of Balochistani society, with a particular focus on how linguistic patterns encode and reproduce gendered power relations. The present study is based on Van Dijk's (1998) Analytical Model. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is considered a fundamental methodological tool within the model, which examines how language reflects, reinforce ideologies, identities and social hierarchies. The findings reveal that women articulate their experiences with rich detail, foregrounding physical and emotional suffering manifested through violence, humiliation, surveillance, and control. At the same time, oppression is subtly constructed through linguistic mechanisms such as presupposition, implication, activation, and passivation, which normalize male authority, obedience, and restricted female autonomy as taken-for-granted social realities. These discursive strategies reinforce limited agency and contribute to the internalization of silence and social pressure among women. The study demonstrates that patriarchal domination is not only expressed through overt acts of violence but also sustained through normalized cultural norms and indirect linguistic choices. The findings reveal that women’s subjugation in Balochistani society is systemic, deeply embedded in social, familial, and cultural structures, and continuously reproduced through discourse, making domination an integral part of everyday life.

Keywords: Discourse analysis; women’s oppression; patriarchy; linguistic representation; agency; Balochistani society; gender and language; power and ideology; narrative analysis; social control