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A Dialectical Ecolinguistic Study of Selected Cartoon Strips in Pakistani English Newspapers This dialectical ecolinguistic study of selected cartoon strips has attempted to investigate how environmental protection is represented in the Pakistani Dawn newspaper, revealing ecological issues. This research employed the theoretical model of dialectical Eco linguistics to see dialectical relations between language, ecology, and society, which uses social praxis as constitutive of the language environment. It conceptualizes three dimensions: ideological, sociological, and biological, as functionally linked to create meaning collaboratively. The cartoon strips model's visual texture (text structure) analysis is Visual Grammar, proposed by Gunther Kress and Van Leeuwen in 2006. This supportive framework complements the dialectical hierarchy model for creating a systematic link between textual and contextual factors significant for meaning-making. The researcher analyzed 50 cartoon strips from Dawn newspaper from January 2018 to December 2020. The researcher discovered that the ideological contexts of the cartoons are mirrored in the structural analysis of cartoons depicting participants in society's physical surroundings. The sociological contexts of strips are represented in participants' interactions with their surroundings. The symbols encapsulating the issue emphasized by Dawn newspaper's usage of visuals represent the biological context of the cartoons.
Social Semiotics of Translingual Pakistani Content Websites Since traditional media migrated to the digital world, a surge of new independently owned content generating websites have entered the field of journalism. The shift has opened countless linguistic stylistic choices to be employed by writers. In recent years, Pakistan has been introduced to these reporting platforms operated by youth. Since Pakistanis are inherently multilingual and multicultural, this phenomenon is also observed in the communication strategies in the online space. As a result, the individuality of concerned situation offers a plethora of new research opportunities, as explored herein. This study collected headlines and titles (textual modes), images, emoticons (visual modes) as used by three leading Pakistani content websites Mangobaaz, Parhlo and The Current to analyze their translingual and multimodal practices using Wei‟s (2017) theory of translanguaging and social semiotics theory for communication presented by Kress (2010) and concluded that the creative youth of Pakistan break the outdated mold of monolingual and monomodal ways of conversing and sharing. The study has implications which suggest a shift towards a contemporary medium for communication which are not limited to translingual approaches to quoting, commentary, naming and labeling, calculated, obscure and concrete mode selection, various ways of addressing, usage of questions, identity, hashtags, emoticons and abbreviations. Where previous Pakistani studies have focused primarily on traditional news sources; this study is the first of its kind to approach the growing industry of Pakistani independent media startups.
Black Lives Matter Movement in Contemporary Afro-American Fiction: Re-Reading the Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome This research is aimed at contributing to the discourse of Black Lives Matter movement by unveiling the impact of racial trauma experienced by African American people as a result of racial profiling, police brutality, and institutionalized racism through Joy DeGruy Leary’s theoretical framework of post traumatic slave syndrome. Post traumatic slave syndrome (PTSS) is a condition experienced by the African American population resulting from transgenerational racial trauma. This study explores the post traumatic slave syndrome experienced by African American people in the aftermath of police brutality through contemporary African American literature. My research is limited to two texts from YA fiction, namely Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give and Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely’s All American Boys. While adopting the qualitative research paradigm, the data for this study has been scrutinized through Alan McKee’s research method of textual analysis. The data from the selected narratives has been anatomized in accordance with the three symptoms of post traumatic slave syndrome i.e. vacant esteem, ever-present anger and racist socialization. Due to considerable differences between the narratives of both of the novels, the conclusions derived from these texts have certain differences among them. As Thomas’ The Hate U Give has been narrated from the perspective of an African American girl Starr, the novel manifests the racial trauma experienced by Starr and other African American people associated with her as a result of an incident of police brutality. On the other hand, Reynolds and Kiely’s All American Boys substantiates the reaction of both African American and white American protagonists towards police brutality.
A Comparative Study of Eco-sensitivities in the Sustainability Discourses of American and Pakistani Print Media The research study has attempted to examine the coverage of eco-sensitive content in the newspapers in America and Pakistan. The coverage of the three UN conferences (UNCED 1992, WSSD 2002, Rio+20 2012) was analysed in the American (The New York Times) and Pakistani (Dawn, The News) newspapers. Data for the study was collected through purposive sampling of two months of coverage by each of the selected newspapers for each of the three UN conferences. The data for the Pakistani context was collected from the National Library of Pakistan Islamabad, while the data for the American context was received through the official newspaper website. The study’s objective was to analyse the framing strategies adopted for the identification ad presentation of the agents and victims characterized by the newspaper coverage from the different contexts. The comparison was conducted on the framing techniques and strategies adopted by the newspapers’ coverage. Stibbe’s (2015) conceptual framework of the story of framing was applied along with Entman’s (1991) analytical framework of five traits of framing. The data were analysed through descriptive and interpretative analysis integrating both the conceptual and analytical frameworks. It was found that the American newspaper provided more coverage and importance to the UN conferences than the Pakistani newspapers. The New York Times placed the agency on the national government and their people, while the Pakistani newspapers restrained from targeting the national entities. The framing traits and strategies used were identical for both contexts with slight differences in that the Pakistani newspapers used more active and explicit characterization of the entities than the American newspaper. The research study suggests that uniform guidelines should be established for newspaper journalists to follow worldwide during the coverage of such eco-sensitive content. The agents and victims of eco-sensitive content should be clearly characterized using ecological labels rather than an economic perspective.
Gendered Violence and Hegemonic Masculinity: A Foucauldian and Bakhtinian Critique of Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend and The Story of a New Name This research explores the nuances of gendered violence and hegemonic masculinity and the consequent impeding underpinnings in the formation of identity of female protagonists of Ferrante’s novels My Brilliant Friend (2011) and The Story of a New Name (2012). This study triangulates Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity, Bakhtin’s notions of monologism, dialogism, monoglossia and heteroglossia and Foucault’s ideas concerning heterotopia, the places and spaces of marginalized, discursive power structures and their role in obstructing agency and identity to devise the theoretical framework. Syllogizing these Connellian, Bakhtinian and Foucauldian conceptualizations, this research has investigated the infiltration of authoritarian monologic power structures in the lower strata of society which orchestrates gendered violence, class warfare, financial exploitation and corruption at the micro levels of society. This study has particularized the monologic power relations which infiltrate the micro levels of society in the postwar Italy to hinder and resist the dialogic ambits as portrayed by Ferrante in the selected texts. Furthermore, this research has investigated the factors that prompt the hegemonic violence which espouses masculine and feminine violence and in turn obstructs female growth and identity. Subsequently, it has exposed the nuances of gendered violence as a result of the intersections of class and gender authoritarianism which impede and hegemonize growth, agency and identity as portrayed in the heterotopic Neapolitan society through the female protagonists.
Assessing Linguistic Complexity in Elementary and Secondary English Textbooks: An SFL Perspective Linguistic complexity (LC) is one of the important indicators that can be used to assess the comprehensibility of school textbooks, especially of English textbooks designed for ESL learners. Among theories that inform researchers about the opacity of text, Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) offers a convincing argument on how a diversity of linguistic items impacts LC. Moreover, systemicists have devised some standards that analyse LC more reliably. Using SFL as the theoretical framework, this study aims to explore the extents of lexical density (LD), nominalization, and grammatical intricacy (GI) within and across elementary and secondary English textbooks. Considering the three central constructs of linguistic complexity (LC), I have probed whether there is a gradual progression in LC within and across the selected study levels. The first five units from the English textbook used at each grade acted as the sample of the analysis. With the analysis tool of manual reading of lexical and grammatical items, nominalization instances, ranking clauses, and clause complexes, I interpreted the data to answer my research questions. The data shows that as per Ure’s defined criterion, some units within the five study levels do not correspond to the LD level of the written text. Moreover, the LD of some units is lower, while some units have higher LD values than the Hallidayan described limits. The use of nominalization does not conform to the suggested age and grade levels. The same is the case with GI. Hence the study has found that the selected textbooks fail to show a systematic and gradual progression of LC within and across the study levels. Several suitable pedagogical interventions have been suggested.
Representation of rape crimes in Pakistani English Newspapers: A framing analysis The reports on rape crimes often tend to project the event of rape in ways that influence peoples’ processing of information given in them. The aim of this study is to investigate the representation and coverage of rape stories is Pakistani press. Since the reports in Pakistani media employ framing and representation strategies, the analysis is substantiated by framing theory. The study is qualitative in nature and analyzes reports that focus on the dreadful crimes of rape in Pakistani society. The current study pursues the reports of five Pakistani newspapers, i.e. The Dawn, The News, The Nation, The Daily Pakistan Observer, and Pakistan Today. Content analyses of fifty reports published from 2020 to 2021 is executed in the study. More specifically, the research discovers how the prevalence of four news frames: gender, culture, crime and identity coexist and support one another in the news media. The findings of the study comprise: i) in gender frame, most of the rape cases subjugate female gender; ii) in culture frame, majority of rape victims include teenagers who were reported to be victimized by family members—in those cases, the perpetrators were cousins, neighbors, or family friends; iii) in crime frame, teenager girls were gang-raped and slain too; and iv) in identity frame, victim's identity is revealed much too often in the reports of rape cases i.e. the writers of these reports hardly follow ethical and moral codes. Thus, this study has presented findings concerning the important role played by the various frames used by Pakistani newspapers and the significant difference in how news is covered by selecting the source and analyzing the frames. Keywords: Rape representation; content analysis; news media; framing analysis
Depiction of Climate Change in Media Discourse: A Corpus-Assisted Ecological Study Texts in newspapers have two purposes: first, they provide a description, and second, they depict that description as true, false, certain, or uncertain. This study investigates the description of climate change in the print media and examines how language is used by newspapers to establish facticity of the information about climate change in the newspaper texts. This study uses Potter's (1996) fact construction theory as a theoretical framework and Stibbe's (2015) facticity model as an analytical framework to analyse the data. The study used a mixed-methods approach. First, 15 articles from three newspapers about climate change from seven countries in the eastern and western worlds were gathered over a five-year period, from 2017 to 2021, using a judgement sample tool. Second, the lexical categories (nouns, verbs, and adverbs) were extracted from the corpus using the Baker (2006) model of concordance with the help of AntConc corpus tool. The results demonstrate that, with a difference of almost 21,000 words, lexical categories are more frequently used in western newspaper corpus data than in eastern data. The study concludes that the description of climate change in Western articles was based on fact, using strong model verbs, adverbs, and nouns. It is expected that this study will spark interest in the use of lexical categories to assess the authenticity of speeches and even books.
Depiction of Climate Change in Media Discourse: A Corpus-Assisted Ecological Study Texts in newspapers have two purposes: first, they provide a description, and second, they depict that description as true, false, certain, or uncertain. This study investigates the description of climate change in the print media and examines how language is used by newspapers to establish facticity of the information about climate change in the newspaper texts. This study uses Potter's (1996) fact construction theory as a theoretical framework and Stibbe's (2015) facticity model as an analytical framework to analyse the data. The study used a mixed-methods approach. First, 15 articles from three newspapers about climate change from seven countries in the eastern and western worlds were gathered over a five-year period, from 2017 to 2021, using a judgement sample tool. Second, the lexical categories (nouns, verbs, and adverbs) were extracted from the corpus using the Baker (2006) model of concordance with the help of AntConc corpus tool. The results demonstrate that, with a difference of almost 21,000 words, lexical categories are more frequently used in western newspaper corpus data than in eastern data. The study concludes that the description of climate change in Western articles was based on fact, using strong model verbs, adverbs, and nouns. It is expected that this study will spark interest in the use of lexical categories to assess the authenticity of speeches and even books.
Tellabilty in forensic Narratives: A Cognitive Semantic Analysis Title: Tellability in Forensic Narratives: A Cognitive-Semantic Analysis Narratives in First Information Reports (FIRs) can serve as important investigative pieces of evidence in court. Petitioners sometimes aggrieve that they have suffered because of the narratives presented before courts in police FIRs and they claim that their actual voice is not narrated in the FIRs by police. Keeping in mind this situation, an investigation was needed to highlight the semantic gap between police marasalas and FIRs based on these marasalas. This study used Langacker‟s subjective dimension of language to find figure-ground segregation through three tools (voice, prepositional and dative alterations) in forensic narratives of police marasalas and FIRs. For this purpose ten police marasalas and their FIRs were collected from five police stations in Peshawar. Data were collected through convenience sampling. The objectives were to investigate if there existed in these forensic narratives any elements of figure-ground or not. If there existed, in what way they impacted the narratives. Two expert lawyers were consulted during this study on several stages. Qualitative textual content analysis and interpretation of marasalas and FIRs were carried out in the process of data analysis. It was found that the tellability of narratives in marasalas were shifted and altered in their FIRs through figure-ground segregation. The researcher suggested that the police officers should write these reports in an accurate, exact, clear and factual manner. The police officers should make their level best to avoid their personal inputs in these forensic narratives to avoid harming or benefitting the plaintiff or petitioners. The common people should also be educated in law and legal language to avoid any kind injustice to them.
English As Linguistic Capital in Pakistani Job Market: A Communicative Competence Perspective. Due to global corporate culture and emerging business trends, communication has become very important for the employees involved in management of different types. This rising trend has influenced Pakistani corporate sector as well. However, in Pakistani job market and corporate set-ups, proficiency in English alone is taken as competence in communication skills; whereas, other important aspects of communicative competence have been overlooked. there is a lack of adequate research from the point of view of Linguistics. Moreover, the research studies that have been carried out concerning Pakistani job market are from the point of view of Management and Organizational Behavior and none from the linguistic perspective. The current research is an attempt to find out the relationship between English as linguistic capital as part of Communicative Competence and employees’ job performance via job satisfaction and promotion in Private Corporate Sector Organizations of Pakistan. As theoretical framework for this study, a hybrid model has been established by combining the model of communicative competence by Celce-Murcia (2007) and the model of types of Capital by Bourdieu (1986). Hybrid model of communicative competence includes competence in five areas viz. Socio Cultural, Discourse, Linguistic, Formulaic and Interactional. The current study considers competence in English as Linguistic competence that serves as Linguistic Capital. To see the effect of communicative competence on the employees’ performance, i.e., job satisfaction and promotion, both quantitative and qualitative approaches have been used. For the quantitative data, two questionnaires have been developed whereas qualitative data has been gathered through semistructured interviews. A sample size of 235 respondents was used from tertiary level corporate organizations; this included 110 respondents from sales organizations including beverages, garments and electronic industries. From services sector, the sample included 125 respondents from telecom, banking, and hotel industries. Results from the study clearly indicate that there is a direct link between employees’ communicative competence (as indicated in the hybrid model) and their job performance and job satisfaction. Moreover, competence in English serves as Linguistic capital in corporate sector organizations as it plays a decisive role in appointments and professional progression. Keywords: Communicative Competence, Linguistic Capital, job performance, job satisfaction,
Ideologies, Mechanism & Practices: A Case Study og Government English Medium Schools in Rural Kp Title: Ideologies, Mechanisms and Practices: A Case Study of English-medium Government Schools in Rural Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan This study explores how a policy to use English as Medium of Instruction at primary level education has been implemented by the authorities across an entire province of Pakistan. The provincial government of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa launched English as Medium of Instruction (EMI) policy in the government primary schools in 2013, despite evidence that instruction in a second language has negative consequences for student learning. It retards creativity, leads to teacher-centered methods, results in high dropout rates, and ensures minimal learning. Through this study, it is explored how a policy is implemented and negotiated at ground level by the teachers in a girls’ primary school; considering the beliefs held by the teachers and how they use several mechanisms while teaching. Drawing on Shohamy's (2006) model of extended language policy consisting primarily of the nexus between Ideology, Practice and Mechanism; qualitative data was collected through semi- structured interviews as well as classroom observations. This data led to a thematic analysis which spanned over 44 individual interview responses and almost 30 classes worth of classroom observations; all with an eye towards understanding how these factors shape teachers' abilities when it comes to the usage of language(s) as Medium of Instruction. It has been found that the teachers prefer to use Pashto in the classroom so their students can better understand a particular topic given within text books. English is glorified by each teacher who participated into this study; they believe it will provide countless opportunities for the students in the future. Urdu is used by the teachers to translate the text from the books and the content is explained it Pashto. It is revealed that that regardless of English being the official language of Medium of Instruction; teachers did not establish this policy in their classrooms. This study provides significant contribution by focusing on micro-level topics such as language policies and their implementation on ground level in the schools. This study stresses that language policies are implemented at higher levels and then handed down for implementation by the teachers into school system.
Anthropocentrism, Artifical Intelligence and Transhumanism: A Posthumanist critique of contemporary Speculative Fiction Title: Anthropocentrism, Artificial Intelligence, and Qualia: A Posthumanist Critique of Contemporary Speculative Fiction The present study is a posthumanist critique of three contemporary science fiction writings that are Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (2021), Ian McEwan’s Machines Like Me (2019), and Jeanette Winterson’s Frankissstein (2019). Under the paradigm of posthumanism, this research has invoked Gilbert Ryle’s concept of ‘ghost in the machine’, Bernard Steiglar’s theory of ‘technics’, and Donna J. Haraway’s ‘cyborg theory’ in order to analyze the primary texts. The research deconstructs the anthropocentric discourse and questions the binary of human and artificial intelligence in the selected texts. For this purpose, the research deconstructs the dualist idea, according to which humans have a mental or non-physical attribute along with their physical existence. Using the anti-dualist and physicalist approaches of different philosophers in order to analyze the primary texts, this research proposes that if humans do not have any non-material, ghostly presence along with their physical body then it is feasible to create artificial intelligence with subjective experience, consciousness, and qualia. Thus, according to this research, the binary of human and artificial intelligence is flawed just like the binaries of gender, culture, and race. Research also opines that the feelings of AI characters in the selected novels are not unreal and hollow simulations but they are as real as the feelings of human characters. After questioning the binary of human and machine intelligence, this research discusses the exploitation and enslavement of AI robots by humans, as portrayed in the selected texts. The research proposes that this exploitation of AI robots is akin to the exploitation and enslavement of Africans and Native Americans in the past. That enslavement was based on the binaries of black/white and native/non-native, while this one is based on the binary of natural/artificial. Researcher identifies this phenomenon as ‘neo-slavery’ in the making. The method used for this research is textual analysis of the selected texts. This Research inspires future researchers to explore science fiction using the posthumanist ideas like post-anthropocentrism, AI ethics, transhumanism, and machine consciousness.
Interrogating Metarecit, Celebrating Petit Recits: A Postmodern Prospective on Tayeb Salih's Seasons of Migeration to the North and Atiq Rahimi's The Patience Stone Title: Interrogating Métarécits, Celebrating Petit Récits: A Postmodern Perspective on Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North and Atiq Rahimi’s The Patience Stone This research aims to investigate how métarécits (grand narratives) are dismantled in Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North and Atiq Rahimi’s The Patience Stone. For this purpose, I have invoked Jean Francois Lyotard’s concept of métarécit and petit récits (mini-narratives). Furthermore, in order to support my scrutiny of the texts, I have employed Linda Hutcheon’s theorizing on (postmodern) parody and irony. The primary texts disapprove grand notions that present themselves as legitimate and grounded in truth. Both texts openly display postmodern sensibility by questioning the métarécits of narration, single-story, canonical, progress, heroic west, war, patriarchy, tradition, science, Marxism, history, and the like. The main argument of this research is to show that both texts do away with métarécits by confronting the authenticated and engaging with the conflicting petit récits. Moreover, the selected texts conform to the postmodern concept of fall of métarécits, where progress seems baneful, education a crime, War impish, justice feigned, religion a traitor, female authoritative and men timid. The selected texts seem to decode métarécits by presenting a number of mini- narratives. Since this research is qualitative and descriptive in nature, its research design is interpretive and exploratory. It is likely to be useful in understanding how postmodern criticism challenges the established and canonical patterns of thought and creatively intervenes in the production of knowledge.