In Pakistan, national security is less a doctrine and more a discourse—a dense, recurring grammar of fear that legitimizes surveillance, silences dissent, and codifies obedience. It is in the lexicon of “foreign agents,” “fifth columnists,” “cyber warriors,” and “national interest” that the state performs its most enduring act: turning abstract threats into concrete controls.
Security discourse thrives on strategic ambiguity. Terms like “sensitive matter,” “classified operations,” or “non-state actors” are deliberately opaque, discouraging scrutiny while inviting speculation. The indeterminacy of these terms constructs a semantic shield, protecting the mechanisms of state power from public accountability. What cannot be defined cannot be challenged.
Van Dijk’s socio-cognitive model illuminates how this vocabulary activates collective mental models of insecurity. Citizens are made to imagine themselves in perpetual peril—externally from neighboring adversaries, internally from ideological deviants, digitally from misinformation campaigns. This sustained perception of threat creates fertile ground for securitized governance.
Within this logic, surveillance becomes vigilance. Laws regulating digital media, data collection, and online speech are presented as defensive tools against cyber-crime and extremism. Yet, beneath the veil of security, they normalize linguistic policing. Words become suspects; expression becomes exposure.
The architecture of control extends to the rhetorical criminalization of dissent. Peaceful protesters are labeled “miscreants,” civil rights activists “agents,” and journalists “anti-state elements.” These labels are not descriptive—they are performative accusations, activating the apparatus of repression through language alone.
This grammar of national security also shapes Pakistan’s diplomatic discourse. Concepts like “strategic autonomy,” “geopolitical stability,” and “sovereignty-first foreign policy” offer high-sounding rationalizations for opaque alliances and covert cooperation. In these phrases, linguistic grandeur veils geopolitical dependency.
Media narratives reinforce this syntax. News tickers flash ominous alerts—“security tightened,” “threat intercepted,” “enemy network dismantled”—producing a continuous aesthetic of emergency. Even when no violence occurs, language ensures the mood of vigilance never dissipates.
This discursive climate often invites self-surveillance. Citizens internalize the boundaries of speech, censor themselves online, and preemptively sanitize political commentary. The power of security discourse lies not only in what it punishes, but in what it precludes.
And yet, resistance persists. Digital satire, encrypted dissent, and carefully coded activism subvert the grammar of fear. Alternative lexicons—ones rooted in rights, transparency, and civil dignity—challenge the semantic monopoly of national security. These counter-discourses demand a different kind of protection: from the tyranny of unexamined language.
For security to serve the public rather than imprison it, Pakistan must deconstruct its current grammar. National safety cannot be built on linguistic opacity and rhetorical coercion. The task is to reclaim language—not just as a medium of control, but as a site of contestation, accountability, and democratic renewal.
