The Discursive Construction of Elite Aspiration and Bureaucratic Power

A Critical Discourse Analysis of Moral Compromise through Sheraz’s Character in Umera Ahmed’s “Man-o-Salwa”

Abstract

This paper inspects the discursive formation of aristocratic aspiration, administrative power dynamics, and moral dilemmas in Umera Ahmed’s social-romantic novel Man-o-Salwa through the Critical Discourse Analysis of Sheraz Akbar’s transformation. It also applies a socio-political approach to highlight the broader discursive practices disseminated in Sheraz’s narrative throughout the novel. This research aims to investigate the role of discourse in reshaping the ideological constructs of social advancement, corruption, elite identity, and moral compromise in dialogues and narrative instances of Sheraz’s character. This study is grounded in Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of Critical Discourse Analysis, which is an approach to studying discourse, viewing language as a social practice and communicative event. It adopts a qualitative textual analysis of selected excerpts from the novel and performs an intricate study to identify recurring linguistic patterns, narrative strategies, and ideological assumptions embedded in the text. The findings indicate that the protagonist’s moral decisions and elite identity formulation are shaped through discursive practices that construct success and respectability as outcomes of aligning with dominant socio-economic structures rather than individual ethical consistency. Overall, the study contributes to CDA-based research in Urdu fiction that reveals the interplay between language, ideology, and social power in the Pakistani context.