Aim and Scope

Abstract The present study explores the stylistic linguistic differences in short stories, written for children and adults, published in Pakistani English magazines on the second dimension of Biber’s (1988) study. The second textual dimension deals with narrative and non-narrative linguistic features showing the narrativeness in fictional texts. The purpose of this study is to explore the different linguistic choices made by the short story writers writing stories for children and adults. It is the norm that the data of short stories published for children is shorter than the stories published for adults and due to the space availability certain linguistic choices may vary for both short stories writers. Furthermore, the study also identifies the stylistic linguistic variability among male and female short story writers. A corpus-based methodology has been used by applying MAT (Multidimensional Analysis Tagger) which is a replica of Biber’s (1988) tagger generally applied for studies on text types and genre variation. The corpus consists of 300 short stories, 150 each for children and adults, published in Pakistani English magazines during 2014-2017. The findings of the study reveal that short stories written for children are more narrative than that of adults showing high narrative discourse. Comparison of male and female short story writers show that male short story writers use high frequency of narrative features than female writers. Keywords: Short stories for children and adults, linguistic variation, Popular Pakistani English magazines, Multidimensional Analysis

Abstract This paper examines the misogynistic and patriarchal construction of Freidan’s concept of the ‘feminine mystique’ in Pakistani context. It critically evaluates the language of social media users which creates a dichotomy between the representation of women as angels or monsters. We conducted feminist critical discourse analysis of two events that took the social media by storm in 2020. The first controversy pertains to Uzma Khan, an actor who was abused for having an affair with a married man by his very affluent wife; the second is that of Sadaf Kanwal, an actor/model who came under intense scrutiny when she tied the knot with Shehroz Sabzwari, a recently-divorced actor. Our focus is on the symbolic violence and the character assassination which are the results of derogatory terms and labels given to the women. We illustrate that such symbolic representations about women who conform to the social norms construct them as homemakers and the ones who digress as home-breakers thus creating a clear bifurcation between women by labelling them as good or bad women. Key Words: Home wreckers, homemakers, feminist critical discourse analysis, Pakistani social media

Abstract The paper analyses the revolutionary discourse masked by romanticism in Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Walt Whitman’s poetry in the light of the socio-cognitive approach of Teun. A. van Dijk. By using the approach, this paper explores the choice of lexemes and selective pronouns in poets’ work to investigate whether their poetry was an upsurge of powerful emotions or consciously constructed by manipulating socio-cultural awareness of readership to accelerate the process of change in respective societies. It is observed that the selective pronouns “I” in Whitman’s and “we” in Faiz’s work evoke the holistic concept of democracy, rather than creating polarizations, eliminate it and invite readers to participate and respond. The lexemes in Whitman’s poetry are celebratory to propagate the collective American idiom; the word choice in Faiz’s poetry poses a protest for the democratic state. Nonetheless, both poets are socio-cognitively involved in revoking shared knowledge through lexemes and selective pronouns. Keywords: Revolutionary Discourse, Socio-cognitive Analysis, Pronouns, Lexemes

Abstract The present research aims at exploring the phenomenon of code-switching as a marker of identity in three popular Pakistani TV Morning shows. It analyses the tendency of code-switching and the identity of the speakers through the choice of language being used. The research takes Myer-Scotton’s Code-switching within Markedness Model (Myer-Scotton, 1989) as its theoretical framework. The data analyses indicated that code-switching is being used as a marker of Identity in the Morning shows. The participants are indicating their linguistic identities through the unmarked or marked choices of language. The matrix language used in all the shows is Urdu as unmarked choice of language in the Pakistani context, whereas English is the major code-switched language both as unmarked and marked according to the context of the situation. Persian and French usage is also found in the show which is marked choice. Other than these languages Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto are also being used as a marker of regional identity by the speakers. Keywords: Code-switching, Markedness, identity, marked choice, unmarked choice.

Abstract This research aims at unveiling the struggle involved in search of individuals’ identity and also highlights the burden of hardships and sense of betrayal in a person’s life. The focus of this learning is to assess Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire in the bright of Erich Fromm’s (1994) analytical philosophy through which the characters will be analyzed, that how they suffer from identity crisis and how the psychoanalytical conflicts are portrayed through them. Home fire tackles the story of migrated people in a foreign land where they feel alienated. Therefore, the researcher has focused on self decentredness as enunciated by Fromm (1994) and is deciphered in the characters of the novel. The current learning is momentous in highlighting the psychological issues which the people face after migration. The findings of the study elucidate the existence of psychological conflicts hence, these conflicts along with identity crisis prohibit the main characters to live their idealized version of life. The selected novel can also be analyzed from the perspective of trauma and post colonialism. Keywords: Identity, psychological conflicts, decentredness, identity crisis.