Negotiating gender identity : A Critical Discourse Analysis of a Pakistani transgender activist’s YouTube interview

Sammanfattning

This study undertakes a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of a pioneering public interview with Dr. Awan, a transgender physician and activist in Pakistan, to investigate the linguistic construction and legitimization of a professional Khawaja Sira identity. As an indigenous South Asian gender category often localized within the transgender spectrum, this identity is examined within a complex socio-legal and cultural landscape. Drawing on Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional model, the research examines the discourse across textual, discursive practice, and sociocultural levels. The analysis demonstrates that the participant strategically employs feminine Urdu verb inflections and specialized lexical registers to establish a distinct grammatical third space. Through sophisticated intertextuality, the discourse integrates authoritative sources, including the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act (2018), World Health Organization medical protocols, and indigenous Sufi spiritual frameworks, constructing a hybridized legitimacy that draws simultaneously on legal, scientific, and spiritual authority. Strategic omissions, such as the avoidance of Western clinical terminology, reflect careful contextualization for a Pakistani public sphere. The findings indicate that this discourse constitutes a direct ideological intervention, contesting the hegemonic gender binary by framing it as a colonial imposition and repositioning the Khawaja Sira identity within authoritative local epistemologies. This research illustrates how discursive practice functions as a critical site of resistance and identity validation, offering a nuanced framework for understanding agentive identity construction in contexts shaped by majoritarian norms and theological influence.