Impact of marketization on the interpersonal relation between the university and students in modern university prospectuses

ABSTRACT

To survive amid fierce competition and reduced government funding, educational institutions struggle at various levels, from launching programs to publicizing them. Consequently, the promotional content they produce has changed over the years in many countries. This study investigated whether these neo-liberal trends have impacted the discourse of Pakistani universities’ promotional content, especially the interpersonal relationship between the prospective students and the university. Incorporating Halliday's Functional Grammar with a Critical Discourse Analytical perspective, the textual analysis of the interpersonal meta-function of language reveals that the universities predominantly employ declarative to realize the speech function of a statement; thus, conveying information without generating an imagined dialogue with the students. Following this, imperatives are used to perform the illocutionary function of offer and in rare cases conditional, optative and question statements. The results also established that the universities employ modalities and modulations sparingly which accounts for the text producers’ preference for conveying their propositions in the form of facts, hence leaving no scope for the reader to form his/her opinion. The infrequent use of pronouns in Pakistani universities leads to a lack of liveliness and affinity in writing. The textual analysis reveals that the universities uphold a manifest distance from potential students.

KEYWORDS:

• Marketing trends
• higher education
• Pakistan
• prospectuses
• interpersonal relation
• university
• students

Acknowledgements

This research paper is part of the first author's PhD thesis titled, ‘Marketization of Higher Education: A Genre Analysis of University Prospectuses in Pakistan’ submitted to Fatima Jinnah Women University, Pakistan. We are grateful for the valuable comments and suggestions by Dr. Samina Amin Qadir during this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Abbreviations of university names (e.g., FJWU, SZABIST) are defined in Table 1 which are used in rest of the research paper.

2 National University of Sciences and Technology, Islamabad; Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences; Quaid-i-Azam University; University of Engineering and Technology Lahore; University of the Punjab; COMSATS University Islamabad.

3 E stands for example.