Analyzing the Language Construction of Victim Blaming in Pakistani Public Discourse: A Corpus-Based Study of Online Reactions and Ideological Patterns

Abstract

This study analyzes victim blaming narratives in Pakistan surrounding harassment cases. It identifies underlying ideologies and recurrent linguistic categories that are utilized to justify victim blaming. A mixed research design was adopted for the systematic evaluation of public opinions on social media platforms. The AntConc software is used to carry out a corpus-based study, which facilitated the quantitative analysis by measuring word frequencies and collocations, whereas the underlying ideologies and societal beliefs are examined through Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) Framework. A purposive sampling technique is utilized to examine harassment cases in the current year 2025. The sampling consists of 1000 comments sourced from 4 different cases, out of which three of the cases took place in recent months. Since Urdu and English hold the status of standard languages and are widely practiced in Pakistan, bilingual comments are examined so that the findings closely align with the communal ideologies of the population being studied. The findings reveal how language is used as a discursive tool to justify violence, condemning victims and reinforcing preconceived patriarchal, cultural and religious narratives. This calls for swift measures to dismantle these negative ideologies on digital platforms.