A QUALITATIVE STRUCTURALIST ANALYSIS OF THE PROMOTIONAL DISCOURSE OF MERA BRAND PAKISTAN

Abstract

Mera Brand Pakistan campaign provides an interesting and powerful example of how government policy, the culture of consumption, and national identity all go hand in hand. Mera Brand Pakistan is a common promotion, but also a profound construction of an ordered conception of national identity and national patriotism through a choice of Pakistani products, language, symbols and narrative. A structuralist approach to theory is adopted to identify the construction of meaning through sign systems of different orders and degrees that comprise the message. In the current study, data has been drawn from actual promotional advertisements, addresses by politicians, social network discussions and main stream media reports. The collected data has been analyzed by using Claude Lvi-Strauss’ structural approach to myth, Roland Barthes’ concept of myth, and Ferdinand de Saussure’s Theory of Linguistics. The analysis reveals how Mera Brand Pakistan constructs an ideology in which the recodification of economic nationalism appears as a commonplace experience of normal everyday living, rather than simply a promotion or merchandising exercise, elevating the brand and ordered sign systems linked to nation, patriotism, consumption and an illusion of patriotic consumption.