Songs of Blood and Sword: An ideological genesis of a political legacy

Abstract

The study aims at investigating ideological stances portrayed through the text, following the Sydney School approach that is built upon the premise of Systemic Functional Linguistics. Story genres framework (Martin & Rose, 2008) has been employed as an analytical tool that is an offshoot of the genre approach, having biographical recount genre as its subcategory, which splits the text into phases and stages and brings out the ideological meanings through systematic approach. The focus of the study is on the biographical recount analysis of the memoir Songs of Blood and Sword by Fatima Bhutto. She narrates the life of the Bhuttos, with her specific focus on events in the life of her late father, Mir Murtaza Bhutto, who remained adamant to the ideology of Bhuttoism and never compromised on principled politics, hence he left a legacy of Bhuttoism. Bhuttoism is a charisma that allows Pakistan Peoples’ Party to steer clear of what the people want for themselves and for the country (Omer & Bushra, 2009). By applying genre  frames; the analysis has been achieved in three waves of recontexualization that are abstraction, enlightenment and engagement. The findings state that real Bhuttoism means cherishing socialist ideology, since Bhuttoism is the simplified version of PPP’s ideology (Syed, 2018) which in reality was practised by Mir Murtaza and hence he is the ideological heir of the legacy of Bhuttoism, Thus, Fatima’s narrative serves to understand the stance of true Bhuttoism.