A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF WEALTH POWER IN HASHIM NADEEM'S NOVEL PREE-ZAD

Abstract

This paper offers a critical discursive analysis of wealth power  in Hashim Nadeem's novel Pree-Zad (2014), drawing on Fairclough's (1989, 1992) conception of power in and behind discourse. The novel, later adapted into a Hum TV drama serial of the same name, portrays a social world in which economic power is routinely converted into social, legal, and interpersonal dominance. This study focuses on the character Seath Behroz Karim, a wealthy landowner whose speech repeatedly enacts and legitimizes forms of control over economically weaker characters. Using Fairclough's Three-Dimensional Model (TDM) of critical discourse analysis (CDA), three purposively selected extracts of Seath Behroz Karim's dialogue are examined at the levels of text (description), discursive practice (interpretation), and social practice (explanation). The analysis shows that lexical choice, modality, and directive speech acts work together to construct wealth as a source of near-total social immunity, while poverty is discursively constructed as a condition of vulnerability and voicelessness. The paper concludes that Pree-Zad functions as a literary index of broader patterns of class-based impunity in Pakistani society, and it discusses the implications, limitations, and directions for future research.