Negotiating Peace or Sustaining Conflict? A Critical Discourse Analysis of Indian and Pakistani Military Briefings during the 2025 Crisis

Abstract

The present research study critically analyzes the narratives of conflict, peace and national identity created by the military media briefings of Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) India and Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Pakistan during the 2025 Pahalgam crisis. Fairclough’s three-dimensional Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) model is used to analyze official press conferences and statements under the guidance of scholarly literature to determine textual choices, practices of discursivity, and socio-cultural ideologies in the briefings. The study is based on the purposive selection of the official state-authored statements and triangulation with pertinent scholarship. The discussion reveals that both states engaged in strategic ambiguity, which projected conditional peace with militarized rhetoric being maintained. India framed its appeals using legalistic and technocratic frames, but Pakistan preempted moral and humanitarian appeals. These counter-narratives ensured the reinforcement of enemy images, legitimate military action and reproduced underlying ideologies and power dynamics. The research contributes to the body of literature on conflict discourse, showing that official communication may become a discursive battlefield that continues the cycles of hostility and diminishes the discursive space of peace.