THEMATIC STRUCTURE IN PAKISTANI NEWSPAPER HEADLINES: AN SFL ANALYSIS OF US–IRAN 2026 CONFLICT NEWS IN DAWN AND THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE

Abstract

The present study examines the use of thematic structures in the US–Iran conflict headlines published between March and May 2026 in Dawn and The Express Tribune newspapers, using the framework of Halliday and Matthiessen's (2014) Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), particularly Textual Meta-function. The study is based on the identification of the Themes used in the selected headlines, comparing the thematic patterns followed by the two newspapers and finally analyzing how these patterns help to present the visions of the ideologies involved in conflict reporting. A qualitative design was used in the research for analysis. The data consisted of 100 headlines (50 from Dawn and 50 from The Express Tribune), collected from published reports between March and May 2026. The results indicated that both newspapers used mostly unmarked topical Themes, emphasizing political figures like Iran, Trump, the United States, and Pakistan. The main way Dawn depicted the conflict was in terms of diplomacy and mediation, along with humanitarian issues, and it utilized more contextualized headline structures. On the other hand, The Express Tribune emphasized the military escalation and the dramatic sides of the conflict by using simple and action-based constructions. Thematic organization is found to be a textual mechanism and an ideological strategy that directs the interpretation of international conflict discourse by readers.