Discursive Construction of Women’s Modesty (haya) in Pakistani Twitter Discourse

Abstract

This study examines the discursive construction of women’s haya (modesty) in Pakistani twitter(X) discourse using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The main focus of the research is that how language constructs the meanings of gender, religion and morality especially in the context of language, power and ideology relationship. The study is based on qualitative interpretive design where 130 publically available tweets in the time frame between the years 2020 to 2026 collected through keyword base searching. In order to strengthen the analysis some corpus-based techniques are applied using Voyant tool so that recurring lexical items and collocation patterns could be identified. Findings show that modesty is not represented as personal spiritual choice instead it is represented as a defining marker of female identity, sign of religious obedience, and condition for social respect. Through repeated lexical association, moral labeling, religious references and cultural binaries discourse construct the modesty not as optional but compulsory. Here power does not directly operate through force but through normalization, public evaluation and symbolic regulation. Women’s bodies are positioned as the site for moral judgment and national identity, those women who deviate from modesty norms face social shaming and moral labeling. Overall, this research demonstrates that social media is discursive arena where ideologies are not only expressed but also reproduce and negotiate through everyday language use. By applying CDA it seems clear that digital discourse in contemporary Pakistani society shapes and maintains gendered power relations.