Contemporary 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.