Pakistani English in the Twenty-First Century : Attitudes, Features, and Uses

Omtale

English is an important part of the linguistic repertoire of Pakistanis and is used in government, top level judiciary, higher education, business, and the internet. In this Element, we cover brief history, attitudes, a feature description, and uses of English on the internet by Pakistanis. The study of attitudes shows that Pakistanis mostly look outwards for standards and norms. The analysis of various features at phonological, orthographic, lexical, and grammatical levels shows that Pakistani English has distinct features that can be categorised in three ways: contact-induced features (e.g. reduplication), the result of conservativism in the variety (e.g. which vs that relatives), and influenced by American and British English (e.g. spellings). English is also frequently used on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We conclude that English in Pakistan is well-established and stabilised with evolutionary characteristics of 'nativisation' on Schneider's Dynamic Model.