Branding As A Discursive Strategy: Marketization Of Higher Education In The Private Universities Of Pakistan

Abstract

Universities are using marketization as a discursive strategy to reshape theiracademic pursuits through the implementation of marketing tactics in education while considering their socioeconomic conditions into account. In this regard, the present study investigates the prospectuses’ discourse about the instillation of business strategies in education. The researcher collected prospectuses of private universities of diverse backgrounds to explicate the marketing tactics and their variations in academia. Through Black’s Pragma stylistic model, the researcher identified how private universities are manifesting stylistic variations by considering the pragmatic factors to persuade the maximum number of students toenrolment. The findings show that Pakistani private universities are increasingly commoditising their language in prospectuses to enhance the number of inductions;however, the inculcation of the corporate sector’s vocabulary reveals that promotional strategies help students decide between the selection of particular university maintain a good reputation in the educational sector. In this context, linguistic features exhibiting discursive and social practices were analysed in the present study. However, the imposition of marketization seems difficult to exclude as it has been accelerated worldwide to encounter financial challenges in the competitive academic environment. Resultantly, universities are required to work within the boundaries of business academia although such trending marketization should not be followed at the cost of academic activities which is the prime purposeof education.