This study investigates gender representation in an English language textbook taught to the students of Grade-5 in public and private schools in Punjab (Pakistan) by applying Fairclough’s three-dimensional model. For this purpose, content and critical discourse analyses approaches were applied to check eight-factor gender discrimination in the said textbook. As a result, it was observed that the said textbook was highly gender biased which represented males more than females. It also appeared that the said textbook had been designed to maintain male dominance in implicit as well as explicit ways. Such state of affairs may lead to gender discrimination in practical lives. Therefore, the study suggests that both genders should be represented in an equalized proportion. This can be achieved by increasing the number of female authors and sensitizing the teachers about gender discrimination and asking them to highlight gender biased issues in education.

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Writing requires a suitable and strategic use of language with communicative potential and structural correctness. The use of coherence and cohesion helps create communicative potential and structural correctness in texts. This study aims to investigate the use of cohesive items in the abstracts of Pakistani research articles and thereby determine what type of cohesive items are frequently used by writers. In addition, the study aims to know what functions the said writers achieve through the most frequently used cohesive items. For this purpose, 50 abstracts were retrieved from two famous Pakistani research journals (25 articles per journal), which were developed into a corpus for the study and analysed through AntConc. 3.4.4.0. The results revealed that Pakistani research writers used reference items the most frequently to achieve “directive” as well as “referential” functions. On the basis of these findings, the study concluded that Pakistani research article writers organised information in abstracts using reference items the most frequently and they were mainly concerned with directive as well as referential functions of meaning. The results also showed that the said writers organised texts on a syntactic level only, which implied that they should organise texts on a semantic level also. This would be possible with the use of repetition devices.

This study aimed to investigate the amount and type of teacher-talk, frequently asked questions and feedback provided by the teacher on learners’ performance in a language classroom. For this purpose, a lecture was recorded from a secondary level English language classroom of a public sector school and interpreted in the light of teacher-student interaction and classroom management model by David Nunan. Results revealed that the maximum amount of time (i.e. 80.1%) was consumed by the teacher which was appropriate. However, certain deviations from classroom management principles were also observed regarding frequently asked questions (i.e. 50% of the total questions were elicitation questions) and the feedback (it was ‘romantic’ in nature). Moreover, wait-time was sufficient but it was of no use to the learners. The study concluded that classroom practices did not conform to the principles therefore, it proposed to ask questions and provide feedback appropriately.

This study investigates the use of modal verbs as stance markers in Pakistani English newspaper editorials. For this purpose, corpora of 1000 editorials have been developed from the editorials published in The News, The Dawn, The Frontier and The Express Tribune (250 editorials from each newspaper) and analyzed using AntConc 3.4.4.0. Results reveal that prediction, possibility and necessity are the characteristic features of Pakistani English newspaper editorials and the writers of these editorials use modality to report, comment or inform about the state of affairs. Results also show that the main focus of Pakistani English newspapers' editorials is on depicting 'what will happen', 'what may happen' and 'what is needed to happen'. On the basis of these results, the study concludes that modality, being an important linguistic property, is used by the editorialists to maintain interaction with readers, establish authorial persona and present personal as well as institutional stance. To cipher readers' negative perception about stance, the editorialists make a skillful use of intermediate-value modals. Study suggests the editorial readers to be aware of the writer's stance marking. For, it may influence mind and manipulate opinions. . Study by Taavitsainen (2001) traces the use of modality or mood in medical register. Biber's (2004) research finds stance in a multi-register corpus, a view from history, and concludes that stance marking differs across registers i.e. strategies of stance, even with same functions, may be different from register to register. Similarly, their frequency can also decrease or increase. Butler (1990) and Hyland (1996) highlighted modality in scientific writing. In the same way, Holmes (1988) found modality in ESP and EAP textbooks.Any study about modal verbs requires, at first, a definition and a list of modal verbs, their semantic meanings, linguistic characteristics, relative frequencies and general functions in various settings. However, to cover a complete discussion of just the semantics of modal verbs is impossible in this study. Therefore, it gives just a review of