Diachronic Variation in the Language of Pakistani English Newspapers: A Multidimensional Analysis

Abstract

This research aims to see the evolution of Pakistani English. Therefore, it diachronically
explores the linguistic variation in Pakistani English newspapers (PEN) utilizing a corpusbased multidimensional approach (MDA). Corpus for this research has been developed from
the texts of four Pakistani English language newspapers published across six decades (1947-
1996), and analyzed through MAT Software. The results reveal that the textual dimensions
studied in PEN vary across the decades. Especially, textual Dimension 2 (D2) across 1977-
1986 and 1987-1996 indicates that the discourse (used in PEN) is narrative due to the overuse
of past tense, present participial clauses and public verbs, and is non-narrative across 1947-
1956, 1957-1966 and 1967-1976 due to the overuse of third person pronouns, past tense and
perfect aspect. Similarly, Dimension 4 (D4) across 1947-1956 highlights the language of
newspapers to be interactive and less argumentative across 1957-1966, 1967-1976, 1977-
1986 and 1987-1996. Due to these historical changes, the language of PEN is found to
statistically less different across the decades, and close to Biber’s (1988) registers. Therefore,
the language of PEN is concluded to: be informationally dense, non-narrative, explicit,
abstract, and less argumentative; and fall in the outer circle (due to its closeness of PEN to
Biber’s registers) where it is named as second language due to the linguistic variation.