Commodification of Higher Education: Investigating the Application of Pragma Stylistic Framework on the Discourses of Pakistani University Prospectuses

Abstract

Pakistani universities, like most other global universities, are commoditising the discourse of prospectuses for commercial and marketisation purposes. This study examined how most higher education institutes in Pakistan employ marketing strategies through linguistic and discoursal means to achieve their desired objectives. This study operationalised Black’s pragma stylistic framework (2006) to analyse the language of the Pakistani prospectuses. The present study synthesised two different genres, such as pragmatics and stylistics, termed pragma stylistics. This study followed a qualitative interpretive paradigm to analyse linguistic characteristics and communication strategies embedded in the discourse of Pakistani university prospectuses in line with the pragma stylistics tenets. The analysis of this study reveals that the pragma stylistic framework is potentially a useful conceptual framework applicable to interpreting the promotional language of Pakistani universities.