Nominalization in Pakistani English News Articles: A Systemic Functional Linguistic Perspective

Abstract

This article aims to explore the use of nominalization in Pakistani English news discourse from a Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) perspective. Following a descriptive-analytical approach, the study examines the distribution and functional deployment of nominalization within political and economic news genres. The data comprises news articles manually annotated using the UAM Corpus tool, focusing on types, roles, and textual realizations of nominalized forms. The analysis reveals a dominant presence of process nominalizations, used to condense information, obscure agency, and construct ideologically neutral narratives. While nominalization has often been associated with academic and scientific writing, this study demonstrates that journalistic genres also exhibit distinct patterns of nominalization driven by thematic and rhetorical demands. These findings suggest that nominalization is not limited by disciplinary boundaries but varies according to communicative purpose and genre conventions. The study offers insights for media discourse analysis, SFL-based linguistic research, and language pedagogy focused on advanced literacy practices.