Bilingual Creativity and World Englishes: A Comparative Multidimensional Analysis of Pakistani English General Fiction with British General Fiction

Abstract

Previous quantitative studies pertaining to the language of Pakistani Fiction in English have focused in general on the individual linguistic features and claims have been made that it has its independent non-native existence. Moreover, previous studies conducted on fictionalized Pakistani English variety show their inability in presenting any framework which can be used for the comparison taking into account the extensive range of linguistic features. Biber (1988) regards multidimensional analysis as the most suitable alternative approach in investigating the linguistic variation across the varieties which is corpus-based, quantitative, empirical and comparative in nature. The present study has compared the discourse styles and the patterns of linguistic variability of Pakistani English General Fiction (PEGF) with British General Fiction (BGF) across Biber’s (1988) textual dimensions. Furthermore, the results of the current study have also been compared with other British Fiction genres analyzed in Biber’s (1988) study along with five textual dimensions. The findings of the study reveal the significant statistical linguistic differences between PEGF and BG, on D1, D4 and D5 and significant statistical linguistic differences between these fictionalized varieties strengthen the previous claims that fictionalized Pakistani English variety has its own unique linguistic characteristics.