Kashmir Journal of Language Research

An Investigation of Grice’s Cooperative Principle in an Interview with Ishaq Dar

Sajjad Rasool — 2022-12-29

This paper investigated the various ways and structures by which legislators and politicians (during political discussions) disregard the Cooperative Principle (CP) in their communication. The interview of Ishaq Dar with the BBC, held in December 2020, was selected to analyse by applying Grice's (1975) four maxims to how politicians show uncooperativeness, as well as being untruthful in their discussion through non-observing the conversational maxims. The quantitative research methodology was used to explore the Grice maxims in Ishaq Dar’s interview. The findings of the present study show the politicians flouted or violated the maxims of quantity, quality, relevance, and manner in the interview. The politicians, like Ishaq Dar usually flouted or violated the maxim of quantity to convey their political views to the public since the objective of the party is to convince individuals to decide in favour of them, regardless of whether what they were stating was not related to the posed inquiry in the interview. It would suggest that they had just arranged what to convince the audience regardless of the questions presented to them. Conclusively, political talks are mostly uncooperative, notwithstanding being untruthful to gain the favour of the masses.

The Advent of Digital Media and the Survival of Minority Languages in Gilgit-Baltistan

Muhammad Issa — 2022-12-29

This study tries to find out the current state of vitality of the local languages spoken in Gilgit-Baltistan (henceforth GB), Pakistan, especially in the current scenario where social media platforms, mediated with the two dominant languages, i.e., Urdu and English, have completely occupied people from all age groups alike. Data for this study were gathered through a questionnaire developed on Google form containing items both closed-ended and open-ended statements. The questionnaire was distributed among the native speakers of local languages spoken in GB through emails, WhatsApp (groups), and Facebook. Mixed methods research was used in the study to collect and analyze the data from different perspectives to draw a clearer and holistic picture of the phenomenon under study. The findings show that relexification in the local languages of Gilgit-Baltistan is at its peak and words from both Urdu and English are being injected into these languages through education, electronic media and social media. Education and social media have been the most prominent and influential modes of word transfer into the local languages of GB. Furthermore, the dominant languages are gradually replacing the local languages in most of the domains of use, which as a result is compelling these minority languages to recede from every day use. Moreover, the natives consider their mother tongues to be impractical and they do not see any future for and in their mother tongues. The attitude of the natives is not favorable for these waning languages which can be a big hurdle in their maintenance and revival.

Challenging Western Fairy tales for Partisan Portrayal of Characters in Nikita Gill’s Fierce Fairytales & Other Stories to Stir Your Soul

Fatima Latif — 2022-12-29

This paper aims to investigate the stereotypes prevalent in classic Western fairy tales concerning characterization in Nikita Gill’s Fierce Fairytales & Other Stories to Stir Your Soul (2018). An intrinsic feature of this research is to analyze the partisan portrayal of characters in fairy tales. It estimates the demarcation of qualities possessed by heroes and villains. It throws light over the clear distinction between good and bad characters having such a callous impact on the mind of readers, especially children. Hence, it confirms that dominating stereotypes in fairy tales are engaged in promoting suppression represented through the characters in fairy tales and reflects Gill’s effort to reappraise the fairy tales in order to prevent the projection of such stereotypes.

A Multidimensional Analysis of Secondary Level Textbooks used in Sindh Board and Federal Board, Pakistan

Asadullah Balouch — 2022-12-29

The present attempt analyses Pakistani English written academic discourse (textbooks) used at secondary level in Sindh and Federal boards. Considering first two dimensions (D1 and D2) by Biber (1988), the study will identify the nature of compiled textbooks at secondary level. The Multidimensional analysis approach (MDA) used as a methodological framework. The first two dimensions (D1and D2) from Biber’s (1988) multidimensional analysis framework examined in the abovementioned documents using MAT software (version 1.3).The findings showed that the language used in English I by STB is informative while English II by STB is non-informational on D1 and it established that this genre found similar to the official documentation on D1 by comparing it to Biber's work of 1988. Conversely, federal board’s English I is non-informational and involved whereas English II found more informative than the genre of STB as the mean scores of the selected corpora is 5.00 and -9.00, respectively. Moreover, STB’s English II genre identified narrative considering D2 analysis that are closed to rehearsed speeches like the Federal Board. Additionally, the STB discourse is far more non-narrative than the Federal Board. Henceforth, the findings highlighted that the textbooks applied in Federal and Sindh boards have variable priorities in terms of D1 and D2 of the said methodological framework.

(Re)Framing Neo-Imperialism: The Role of Media Discourse in Constructing Ideological Subjects in Art Spiegelman’s In the Shadow of No Towers

Shumaila Noreen — 2022-12-29

The catastrophe of 9/11 sparked decades of controversy owing to an array of interpretive strategies being employed to dissect variegated issues pertaining to ideology, representation, political implications, the ensuing islamophobia and the Arab, Muslim, terrorist trajectory which became a standard image against which the Muslims were measured. Keeping the multi-faceted strings of tension in the backdrop of 9/11, the current study aims at investigating the idea of how media discourse can play a lethal role in twisting common opinion and manipulates the masses. It also addresses how media personnel incorporate their personal partialities and biases in an artistic way; thus, use discourse to perpetuate ideology. By studying the stereotyped representation of Islamophobia/Xenophobia in Spiegelman’ In the Shadow of No Towers, the study highlights the role of discourse that can shatter the binaries between fair/foul and play a havoc with general sensibility tuning them into subjects interpellated by the dominant ideology.

In-operative Community to Imagi-nation

Ayesha Parveen — 2022-12-29

The paper analyzes the narrative representation of the aftermath of the 1947 Indo-Pakistan partition with special reference to the nature of communal cooperation and violence in Khushwant Singh’s novel Train to Pakistan. The Mano Majra community represents the shift in multiple ethnic groups’ relations with each other before and after the partition. Using Jean Luc Nancy’s concept of inoperative community and Benedict Anderson’s concept of nation as an imagined community, this paper studies pre-partition community as presented by Singh as in-operative (Nancy’s definition) which in the imminent wake of partition becomes imagi-nation (elaborating upon Anderson’s concept of imagined community). This claim is substantiated by discussing how the village residents celebrate unity in diversity before partition but get enflamed in the chaotic indoctrination of nationalism. However, in the new state, love of Jugga and Nooran which unflinchingly resists communal distancing is the only relic of Nancy’s inoperative community. The study concludes that the spirit of nationalism is powerful enough to create an imagined community at the cost of sacrificing previously existing inoperative communities but individual commitments and ethics can survive even under the umbrella of grand political narratives.

Envisioning Online Language Teaching in Pakistan’s Context

Tanzeela Anbreen — 2022-12-29

Covid 19 impacted several social groups, including English language teachers in Pakistan’s context. English language teachers encountered several issues due to the emergency shift from on-campus to online teaching mode during Covid 19. The current study was a case study that mainly investigated the university English language teachers’ challenges in online teaching during the lockdown using Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) to understand language teachers' challenges. TPACK is the effectiveness of lesson delivery with the help of technology (Koehler et al., 2013). The current study also explored how university language teachers handled the arising challenges and the areas of improvement they suggested for future online language education in Pakistan. Three language teachers from a public sector university in Punjab were recruited to collect data. The data was collected through class observations in nine lessons taught by the three participant teachers and by conducting in-depth, semi-structured interviews. A thematic analysis was conducted following Braun and Clarke (2006). The findings suggested that the key challenges included were (a) accessibility to technology, (b) pedagogical challenges, and (c) learners' behaviour towards language learning. This study gives some practical suggestions for successful online language education in the future.

Study of Action Verbs Used in the Speeches of General Raheel Sharif

Amna — 2022-12-29

The present study investigated the speech acts used by retired 15th Chief of Army Staff (COAS), General Raheel Sharif in his spoken discourse. The selected speeches were examined considering Searle’s (1979) classification of speech acts using his concept of Illocutionary Force Indicating Devices (IFIDS). As there is no such research yet conducted on this subject, therefore, it is significant in filling the research gap in this area. The qualitative study aimed to identify the illocutionary acts used by the General to eliminate the terrorism from Pakistan. A total of thirteen news reports were taken from Pakistani local English newspapers, The Nation, and Dawn from November 2013 to November 2016. All the selected utterances were in direct speech and focused on the theme of terrorism. Therefore, the results indicated that Chief used declarative act to assert the determination and commitment of Pakistan Army against terrorism. It also reflected on authority to persuade his troops and institutional beliefs of the organization.

Dialectics of Diegetic and Mimetic Patterns in Sidhwa’s Ice-Candy Man

Farrukh Nadeem — 2022-12-29

In the wake of narratology, the art of storytelling becomes the focus of interest for structuralists and semioticians. With the discoveries of poetics, patterns and principals of narratives in Russian Formalism, the French structuralism also applied its tools and modes of investigation to contemporary modalities. As a result of this analytical culture in fictional criticism, the discourse analysis of narrative structures has attracted much attention as a field in western academia. A fictional text, being primarily the artistic re-presentation of human actions through narratives, incorporates certain mimetic experimentations to endorse the structural/semiotic significance of showing along with the telling (diegesis) of events and incidents. At both the macro and micro levels of narrative structure, the interdependence of these two paradigms—diegesis and mimesis can vividly be observed in modern fiction. The presence of mimesis or showing through dramatizing of action, categorically marks, on the one hand, the situational gravity in a fictional text and, on the other, the significance of how the things happen besides what happens in a story. Research, therefore, offers a new critical paradigm to approach a well-known fiction, Bapsi Sidhwa’s novel Ice-Candy Man that is entirely based on the tragic events of 1947 partition of the Subcontinent. How, narratively, Sidhwa juxtaposes telling (narration) with a spectacular showing of the tragic events, will be illustrated through textual evidence in my paper.