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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