Application of Multidimensional Analysis on Covid themed Editorials of Dawn

Abstract

During the trying times of the Covid-19, the media discourse manifested in the form of Newspaper editorials exhibiting careful use of language. So, in order to analyze such language use, a well reputed newspaper published electronically and in print was selected. Two hundred editorials containing 82,430 words covering the covid theme from Dawn news formed the specialized corpus for the present study. To analyze this corpus, Biber’s Multidimensional Model which was proposed in 1995 has been applied. After compilation of Corpus the data were sent to Biber’s lab for tagging. The raw tagged data has undergone various statistical processes such as factor analysis and promax rotation. The results yielded five dimensions and the system generated diagrams provided the closest text types. The dimensions thus formed include; broadcast, conversations, personal letters, academic prose, and official document. The results obtained from linguistic features having the highest negative or positive loadings were presented in the form of mean values, graphs, figures, and tables. The findings indicate that the editorials from the Dawn are more informational as compared to narrative. Their content had more informational values.