Modality in Admission Documents of Public Medical Institutions in Punjab: An SFL-Based Study

The process and debate around medical admissions are also contentious in terms of power dynamics in Punjab. This paper examines the modality system used in the admission documents, policy notification, and application form of public medical universities of Punjab (Pakistan). The study examines the linguistic construction of institutional authority and applicant obligations in the study's light of Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) with a particular focus on the interpersonal metafunction. This study uses a corpus approach by using 5 official documents from the institution, such as the University of Health Sciences (UHS), Services Institute of Medical Sciences (SIMS), Sargodha Medical College (SMC), Faisalabad Medical University (FMU), and the overall policies of the Government of Punjab, to identify the dominant modal operators. The results show that high value modulation (deontic modality) is massively used, especially with modal operators like 'shall' and 'must', as well as negative polarities. This linguistic approach is to produce an authoritative, monologic discourse which places the institution as an unchallengeable gatekeeper, and the prospective student as a subservient actor who has non-negotiable legal obligations. The study draws attention to the impact of the social dimension of the debates on the admission notices in education. It states that these texts are not only sources of information but are also good tools of control. The study also examines the normalisation process of exclusion of candidates in terms of objective and clear language. his perspective enables them to perceive institutional rejection not only as just exclusion but as an automatic reaction, related to language. Finally, in this detailed analysis, there is a clear argument that language understanding is an important way to understand the workings of power in post-colonial educational systems in which the academic futures of students are determined by bureaucratic inertia. The study implies that the language used in medical admission policies in Punjab functions as a powerful institutional mechanism that legitimizes authority, normalizes exclusion, and restricts applicants’ agency through highly authoritative and obligation-centered discourse.