Uses of Language to Manipulate People in Politics in Quaid E Azam's Speech

What is Language

Language is a medium through which we communicate our ideas, believes and thoughts etc to others.

What is Politics

Politics is the ability to control other through exercise of power.

Linguistic Manipulation

The use of indirect speech acts in a conscious manner to control the others.

Linguistic manipulation is an authoritative instrument in politics because political discourse is initially focused on convincing people to take specific political action or to make critical political decisions. To persuade the capable electorate in present time societies, politics primarily over powers the mass media, which leads to creating innovative forms of linguistics manipulation. For example altered forms of pressed conferences and pressed statements, efficient text in slogans, the connotative meanings of words a combo of language and pictorial imagery. In a net shell language play a pregnant role because it is a device through which the exploit aims and targets become obvious.

Quaid e Azam is one of the accomplished leaders of the last century. In Sub-continent there was no one equal to him in perception, insight, intellect and perseverance. According to Sayeed. K. B Jinnah’s place and prestige was very catchy in Sub-continent. He was not only a party leader in the western sense of the term, he was the Quaid e Azam, the great leader of the movement. He worked wonders and sculpture out an independent state namely Pakistan on the world map within the fantastic period of seven years. It is said that Jinnah had strong power of speech. His words and structures were never barren of meaning. They carry such ideational functions, representations and identities as have strong bump on the minds of others.

The structures such as judicator, lexicon, diction and public context of political speeches have been a massive attention for critical discourse and applied linguistic. Also a lot of work have been done on the speeches of the politicians around the globe. So has efforts been made to interpret Quaid’s speech through critical discourse analysis.

The purpose of this project is to disclose certain tools and devices, e.g. Euphemisms, pronouns etc. in Jinnah’s speech which he carried out in the First Constitutional Assembly of Pakistan. Although there are so many speeches delivered by Jinnah that have political essence but we chosed this speech because it contain nutriment for pondering for entire nation.

Background Information

Sources:

Asian studies

A research journal of south Asian studies.

Vol.30, no.1, January-June 2015, pp.159-173

Summary of the Speech

Quaid e Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah opens his speech by thanking all the people present there for electing him as a president and for speaking in appreciation of his services. He elaborates on to main functions of constituent assembly. Framing the future constitution of Pakistan and functioning as a complete sovereign body are the functions to be perform by the constituent assembly. He stresses upon unprecedented and unparalleled achievement which is, no doubt, the creation of Pakistan. He emphasized on the huge responsibility of how to exercise power and to take decisions as they were now an autonomous body. He highlighted the importance of law and order in the country. He also spoke on the curse of bribery and corruption, black-marketing, nepotism and jobbery. He was harsh in words as he said he will not tolerate such curses in his country. Quaid e Azam was confident that the future history will record its verdict in favor of his decision of partition. He did not ignored minorities in his speech he stated that to make Pakistan a prosperous country we had to adopt certain things, e.g. working incorporation, leaving behind the past, burying the hatched, and concentrating on the well-being of the masses especially poor. Through the use of hyponyms like Pathans, Punjabis, Shias, Sunnis in Muslims and Brahmins, Bengalis, Madrasis and so on in Hindus, he calls attention to the biggest hurdle in attaining independence. He spotlights that no discrimination will be made among people based on their caste creed religion minority or majority. In the end Jinnah draws attention of the people to his aims and objectives which are justice, impartiality and unbiasness. He closes his speech by reading out a message he received from the United States of America. The speech contains best wishes to the president constituent assembly and to the whole nation.

Socio-cultural, Political, Historical Context for the Text

The analysis of this measure belongs to three facet of socio-cultural overall situation such as economic political and cultural.

Quaid e Azam 11th august 1947 was one of the greatest or turning speech in the history of Pakistan. Being the first president of Pakistan conveyed his first formal speech to the members of the constitutional assembly. There were two purposes of his speech first was to show the appreciation to the members and also the entire nation for electing him the president second was to take the nation into trust in the situation of Indian separation.

As Pakistan was a just created state at such time so it was not having any constitution, administrative machinery and no governance. That’s why Quaid e Azam talk about the legislation of Pakistan as he knew that being a newly born country (Pakistan), they may face social problems such as corruption, bribery, black-marketing, nepotism and jobbery so Jinnah convinced the audience to take steps against these wickedness. Moreover there were many more people who were against the division of Punjab and Bengal specifically so Jinnah had to respond to such resistance by arguing in favor of division and the peril movement of India do not separate. Pakistan had Muslims in majority and Hindus in minority and moreover the Muslims were further divided into Pathans, Punjabis, Sunnis and Shias etc. and also Hindu had Brahmins, and Vashvanas etc., so Jinnah had to prove to them by giving examples that Muslims and Hindus will be equal citizens if they removed the discrimination and live freely.

Analysis

Pronouns Definition

A word used instead of noun or replacing a noun in order to avoid repetition.

Pronouns from Text

• I cordially thank you for the honor you have conferred upon me.
• You know really that not only we ourselves are wondering...
• Remember that you are now a sovereign legislative body…
• Now you have to tackle this monster…

In the above statements, YOU is the pronoun used to address the audience listening to his speech.

...Because even as regards Muslims you have Punjabis, Pathans …

In the above statement, YOU is used to address Muslims only ignoring the people from other religions.

• Nobody could have conquered you…
• Nobody could have continues its hold on you…
• You are free to go to your temples. You are free to go to your mosques…
• But you must remember as I have said that this mighty revolution…

In these sentences, YOU is used to address the whole nation.

• We should begin to work in that spirit…
• We have to do the best we can in adopting a provisional constitution …
• We would have been free people long long ago
• We must learn a lesson from it.
• We have achieved it peacefully…

In the above sentences, WE has been used to for both, himself and the nation.

• I can’t emphasize it too much.
• I shall say a few things as they occur to me.
• I sincerely hope that with your support and cooperation …

Here, personal pronoun I is used by Jinnah to refer to himself.

They ought to be severely punished …

THEY is used to refer to black-marketers.

It, therefore, places on you gravest responsibility as to how you should take decisions.

Here IT is used to refer to the powers that the legislative body possesses.

There are sections of people who may not agree with it, who may not like it …

IT is used to avoid using the word ‘partition’ frequently.

Metaphors Definition

Substitution of one thing for another in order to suggest comparison or resemblance; mundane thing that is used as a symbol for an abstract concept.

• You have to tackle this monster which today is a colossal crime against society.
• I think the whole world is wondering at this unprecedented cyclonic revolution…
• This mighty sub-continent with all kinds of inhabitants has brought under a plan which is titanic unknown, unparalleled.
• We must put that down with the iron hand and ….

Monster, cyclonic revolution, titanic and iron hand are the metaphor used in the speech in which Jinnah want to highlight the intensity and vastness and extensiveness of the following issue or matter.

No power can hold another nation, and specially a nation of 400 million souls in subjection…

Souls in subjection is used metaphorically in the above sentence.

Parallelism Definition

A device which expresses several ideas in a series of similar structures. It is used to draw attention to a particular part of message and make it stand out from the rest of the speech.

I shall never tolerate any kind of jobbery or nepotism. Whenever I will find that such a practice is continuing anywhere, low or high, I shall certainly not countenance it.

In the above sentences Jinnah uses I SHALL twice to draw attention of the audience towards certain curses in the society.

If you want to make this great state of Pakistan happy and prosperous… If you will work in co-operation… if you change your past and work together in a spirit.

Through the use of parallelism, the leader is transferring great responsibility to his nation.

Maybe that view is correct; maybe it is not; that remains to be same

The use of MAYBE twice in the sentence above highlights the confusion regarding partition.

You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques….

To make the freedom of worship stand out in his speech, YOU ARE FREE is used several times.

Rule of Three

Rule of three is used to stress the concept and points more completely and rise our memorability.

• Mr. President, ladies and Gentlemen
• So that your life, property and religious beliefs of its subjections are fully protected….
• You may belong to any religion or cast or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the state.

The rule of three that have been used to make the message convincing and persuading, to make it remember for much extensive time for the audiences.

The text of Jinnah speech does not show any euphemistic expression. Also it does not contain any presupposition or implicature.

Conclusion

The purpose of doing this project was to reveal which linguistic resources were used to project the political ideology by Quaid e Azam in his speech. The textual analysis of Jinnah’s speech shows that devices which include hyponyms, metaphors, parallelism, pronouns etc. depicts Jinnah’s vision regarding nationalities and conventional social evils in Pakistan. His words alludes that he wanted to sermonize fair play, equality and impartiality for the entire nation. The breakdown of grammatical features of the speech indicates that he was very loud and open in his sentences. Social analysis of the speech narrates that it was Quaid’s first formal address and through this address he wanted to take all the people into confidence. Also, his purpose was to provide a blueprint for the newly created country. Through analyzing this speech it is evident that ideologies can be constructed and the minds of the listeners can be influenced through the use of language. It is obvious in the study of the speech that Jinnah very cautiously and deliberately chose specific forms, vocabulary and devices so to make a distinct bump on their listeners. The study therefore has implications for the theory of political discourse analysis.

Data collection

The text of Quaid’s (11th august 1947) has been taken from the internet.