The Misogynistic Language and Traditional Roles: A Feminist Stylistics Study of Two Pakistani Dramas “Zindagi Gulzar Hai (2013) and Teray Bin (2023)

Abstract

Since 2018, the women's movement in Pakistan has experienced a resurgence, promoting discourse on women's rights, gender roles and stereotypes. The purpose of this study is to critically evaluate the representation of women from a linguistic perspective in Pakistani broadcast drama serials, examining whether the linguistic representation of gender roles projected onto female characters has undergone evolution. This study employs a feminist analysis of two Pakistani dramas from private television channels, named “Zindagi Gulzar Hai”, representing the early 2010s and ‘’Teray bin”, representing the early 2020s. This research utilises the framework of feminist stylistics by Sara Mills to unveil the biases embedded in misogynistic language. The study examined the verbal discrimination depicting misogynistic language used to trivialise women and uphold male supremacy. The findings have found the use of misogynistic language through the lexical, phrasal, sentential and discourse levels, used in a manner to downplay women’s labour and restrict them to the stereotypes of femininity imposed by the patriarchal standards.