How Does a Single Professional Issue Become Social Movement Discourse? Case of Lawyers’ Movement in Pakistan

This paper explores the modification of a discourse in the context of emergence of social movement from a single issue professional campaign through a framework of Habermasian communicative action theory. The paper analyses the communicative acts in the movement discourse through argumentation, modification of legal discourse into social discourse, and structural aspects of lawyers‘ organisation. The single professional issue was the deposition of Chief Justice of Supreme Court of Pakistan on March 9, 2007 by the then President/General. The lawyers started a movement for restoration of Chief Justice and with due coverage from the newly founded private electronic media in Pakistan it attempted to became a populist movement linking to wider reform of Pakistani society. The research also explores why the movement was not sustained as a mass social movement.