A Corpus Based Analysis of Pakistani English

Abstract

English has become a global language and virtually every nation is using it for national or international communication. It is helping the world to bridge the ethnic and linguistic differences. Although it has got international status, it is also exhibiting local cultural traits. It enjoys global ownership and the age old concept that it only reflects the Judo-Christian cultural traditions has been rejected at least by the language scholars around the globe. In this evolutionary process, new dialects and varieties are emerging. A plethora of research activity, in line with the ‘World Englishes’ tradition, is being conducted around the globe. The issues like status of the newly emerging varieties of English and the similarities and differences between the native and nativised varieties, are being vigorously studied. English, in Pakistan, enjoys the status of a privileged official language. English is being used both for country internal as well as external functions. English language has been nativised in Pakistan. Pakistani English is similar to British and American English to the extent that it does not impede communication but it has developed a flavor and colour of its own. Pakistani English is not a well researched variety. Only a handful of research studies have been conducted so far, pointing to some of the variety specific features, but all of these researches are intuition based or have relied on chance examples. No quantitative data based comparative study of the variety exists till to-date. The present research is an attempt to make a corpus based analysis of Pakistani English and to find some characteristic features of the variety which are different from the British and American varieties. It is basically a quantitative, corpus based comparative research. Two million words corpora, each from Pakistani, British and American written Englishes have been employed to outline the characteristic features of Pakistani English. The research question, ‘Whether Pakistani English is an independent variety’, has not been completely answered by the present research as the data available was not sufficient enough to make any conclusive judgement. But it is still considered a step forward, in the sense that in this research corpus based methodology has been used to study the variety specific features of Pakistani English. On the one hand, it has verified some of the earlier judgements about Pakistani English and on the other hand it has pointed out the new areas which have not been discussed in the previous literature about Pakistani English. Some of the areas like the use of subjunctive, verb particle, and complementation have been explored by the linguists to study the distinctive features of the non native varieties. The same has been done in the case of Pakistani English and the results indicate that these areas show potential differences among the native varieties, i.e. British and American Englishes, and the Pakistani English which need to be explored further. The results point out that Pakistani English is an independent, systematic, and rule governed variety which shares features both with the British and American Englishes.