Traces of American English in Pakistani English: A Comparative Multi-dimensional Study of Press Editorials

Abstract

This study explores the linguistic variation of periodized data of Pakistani press editorials in comparison with American press editorials. Most of the previous research studies conducted on Pakistani English, in general, and press editorial, in particular, compare Pakistani English with British English. No study compares Pakistani press editorials from a period to American press editorials. To trace the influence of American English on Pakistani English, this study explores the phases of Pakistani press editorials that resemble or differ from American press editorials. Biber’s (1988) multi-dimensional modal was used as a theoretical framework for this study. It exploited a diachronic corpus of Pakistani press editorials which was divided into three temporally distanced phases: 1947-1951, 1971-1975, and 2012- 2016. The Biber tagger was employed to annotate grammatical features. To draw a comparison, Nini’s (2015) MAT results of the American (Brown) corpus were utilized. The regression method was used for the computation of factor scores and analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to draw a comparison between the diachronic data of Pakistani press editorials and American press editorials. The findings indicate that phase 3 of Pakistani press editorials is the closest to American press editorials in producing informational and explicit discourse. Phase 1 of Pakistani press editorials and American press editorials are quite close in non-narrative and abstract style in their discourse production. Moreover, phase 2 of Pakistani press editorials and American press editorials with a small difference in mean scores produce overt expression of persuasion.

Exploring linguistic variation in Pakistani English newspaper editorials through multidimensional analysis

“…Ali, 2020; M. Ali & Sheeraz, 2018, 2021; Alvi, 2017) has also applied MDA to study linguistic variation in newspaper editorials. However, the previous research applied MDA approach in a limited way.…”