The linguistic repertoire of Urdu/English bilinguals in cyber-language
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Date
2014
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University of Management and Technology
Abstract
Today, cyber-communication with its various manifestations is proliferating ubiquitously in the lives of most people. Linguistic variations and changes which used to happen over centuries or decades appear to be now taking place in a matter of years. There is likelihood that social dynamics of language that we have been debating over the years may require renewed attention in the digital discourse. The purpose of this study is to investigate how Urdu/English bilinguals use their linguistic repertoire in cyber-communication, and in what ways they are adapting linguistic ecology of English that seems to be encouraging language variation.Much like researchers dealing with any kind of data, researchers who deal with digital data are often confronted with a variety of non-trivial questions. Most of them relate to the size and representativeness of data samples; data processing techniques; limitations of genres; kind and amount of the necessary contextual information; and ethical issues, such as anonymity and privacy protection. Keeping such questions in mind, the procedures of data collection, ethical considerations of collecting and handling data, data analysis and the theoretical underpinnings were set up to address the underlying research questions. The data was sampled from the Bachelor of Science students (who had Urdu as their primary language of communication and English as one of the academic languages or the most prestigious second language) of the five private (by and large not funded by the State) institutions of higher learning. The data was primarily from their Facebook communication on the walls. The procedure for analysis was conceived within much current theoretical work on text analysis.
The study reveals that the conventions of what may be termed minimal linguistics are cropping up in the digital discourse, which has affected linguistic choices of the subjects. They have invented unique lexical and syntactic features for communication. Moreover, these features are not random but rather they can be mapped out by unique configurations, which are largely governed by phonology, orthography and semantics. Regardless of the minimal linguistic forms, neologism is a relatively less prevalent feature. The linguistic features which involved sheer complexity are generally avoided; nevertheless linguistic simplification is emerging as a norm. The semantic gaps are filled mostly, if not always, through the context. Chi-squared test of independence shows that such types of pattern and the language used are related.
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Ph.D Thesis, English Language and Literature