Abstract
The importance of linguistic variation has been discussed in a
variety of theoretical, methodological and practical studies.
Pakistani English (PE) is an emerging independent, non-native
variety of English. However, currently there is a lack of a
comprehensive description of its characteristics in the literature.
The present research addresses this problem by investigating the
linguistic variation of Pakistani English newspaper editorials
(Pak. Ed.). It aims to identify if the language used in PE is a
distinguished linguistic sub-register of Pakistani Newspaper
English. In order to address this question, the technique of
multidimensional (MD) analysis is utilized. A diverse dataset,
consisting of 250 editorials from five leading newspapers, has
been compiled which provides a variety and range of topics
covered by different authors. The resulting corpus is tagged for
67 linguistic features and factor analysis has been conducted, to
identify major linguistic patterns of co-occurrence. Five textual
dimensions are utilized to define some of the linguistic and
functional characteristics of Pak. Ed. corpus. The dimensions
collectively provide information content, narrative features,
situation-oriented references, extent of argumentative language
and abstract style. A comparison of Pakistani editorials with
British editorials shows marked linguistic variation and
indicates the Frontier Post to be the closest newspaper to British
newspapers in terms of editorial writing. On the other hand, the
Dawn displays quite distant results among all dimensions except
in the narrative features. Based on these results, it is proposed
that linguistic variation occurs in the editorial writings of
Pakistani English on both national and international levels.
Urooj Alvi, Muhammad Asim Mehmood, Shafqat Rasool. (2016) A Multidimensional Analysis of Pakistani Press Editorials , The Dialogue, Volume 11, Issue 3.
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