NARRATING VIOLENCE, NEGOTIATING POWER: A FEMINIST CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF LEXICO-GRAMMAR IN DOMESTIC VIOLENCE COMPLAINTS

Abstract

The study investigates the lexico-grammatical choices employed in domestic violence complaints submitted to the Punjab Commission on the Status of Women and four police stations in Lahore. It draws on Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (Lazar, 2014) to reveal sociocultural ideologies and the victimization of women. It examines the complex interplay of gender and power relations, articulated through linguistic choices, such as culturally informed metaphors, extended metaphors, adjectives, and adverbs. These linguistic features are embedded in the grammatical structures and analyzed through transitivity, mood, and modality. The results indicate that the complaints reflect asymmetric gendered practices which are endemic in a deeply entrenched patriarchal society such as Pakistan's, where violence against women is often rationalized and normalized, discouraging women from reporting it, thereby leading them to endure domestic abuse for a long period. The complaints are invested with multilayered sociocultural, economic, and gender-based ideologies, revealed through linguistic features. The findings contribute to understanding the complexities of the real-world use of complaints in discourse, which can help dismantle the ways in which oppression based on gender operates to enable future social transformation.