Logical Connectors in Newspapers: A Comparative Study of Pakistani And British Columns
Abstract
The present study is an attempt to explore and compare the patterns and frequencies of usage of logical connectors in Pakistani and British English newspapers. Logical connectors are important tools that make the written and spoken discourse rationally more connected and cohesive. Non-native speakers of English often confuse spoken mode with written communication and certain expressions that are suitable for spoken are transformed and applied in written discourse. It results in a combination of such propositions that are semantically and logically less related to each other. Present study aims to study whether the same trend exist in the Pakistani English and British newspapers. Pakistani English and British newspapers columns were studied from June to July 2016. Antconc software has been used to compare and contrast the use of logical connectors in both corpora. The results of the present study revealed that there is a significant difference in the use of connectors in both corpora. Pakistani column writers use more logical connectors as compared to the British. This overuse of logical connectors suggests the influence of Urdu, Pakistani writers tend to use certain expressions that the native would simply avoid in columns writing.
References
Asassfeh, S. M. (2005). Perception and actual use in expository academic writing of logical connectors by graduate nonnative speakers of English and comparable native speaker controls. Unpublished PhD Thesis. The University of Alabama. Tuscaloosa.
Anwar, B. (2012). A Sociolinguistic Study of Urdu-English Code- Switching in Pakistan. Unpublished PhD Thesis, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan.
Anwar, B. & Talaat, M. (2011). English in non-native context: Distinctive features of Pakistani journalistic English. ELF Annual Research Journal. Vol 13, 11-20.
Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S. & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman grammar of spoken and written English. London: Longman.
Brown, H. D. (1994). Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. NewJersv: Prentice Hall Regents.
Burchfield, R. W. (1996). The New Fowler's Modern English Usage. (Ed.), Clare Press: Oxford, England.
Baumgardner, R. J. (1993). Utilizing Pakistani English Newspapers to teach Grammar. In Robert J. Baumgardner (Ed.). The English Language in Pakistan. Karachi: Oxford University Press. pp. 255-273.
Collins Cobuild English Dictionary (1995). London: Harpcrflollins.
Caron J. (1994). Connectives. In Asher R.E. and Simpson J.M.Y. (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Vol. 2, Pergamon, Oxford, pp. 706-707.
Chalker, S. (1996). Collins Cobuild English Guides 9: Linking Words. London: HarperCollins.
Chen, C. (2006). The use of conjunctive adverbials in the academic papers of advanced Taiwanese EFL learners. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics. Vol. 11(1), 113-130.
Dafouz-Milne, E. (2008). The pragmatic role of textual and interpersonal metadiscourse markers in the construction and attainment of persuasion: Across-linguistic study of Newspaper discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, Vol. 40 (4), pp. 95-113.
Fraser, B. (1990). An Approach to Discourse Markers. Journal of Pragmatics. Vol. 14, pp. 383-395.
Flowerdew, L. (2004). The argument for using English specialized corpora to understand academic and professional language. In U. Connor, T. Upton (Eds.), Discourse in the professions: Perspectives from corpus linguistics, pp. 11-36. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Greenbaum, S. & Quirk, R. (1993). A student's Grammar of the English Language. Essex: Longman.
Granger, S. & Tyson, S. (1996). Connector usage in the English essay writing of native and non-native EFL speakers of English. World, Englishes, Vol. 15 (1), pp. 17-27.
Halliday, M.A. K. & Hassan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. London: Longman.
Ishikawa, S. (2009). Phraseology Overused and Underused by Japanese Learners of English: A Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis. In K. Yagi & T. Kanzaki (Eds.), Phraseology, Corpus Linguistics and exicography: Papers from Phraseology 2009 in Japan (pp.87-100). Nishinomiya, Japan: Kwansei Gakuin University Press.
Jameel. A., Mahmood, A., Hussain, Z. & Shakir, A. (2014). A Corpus- Based Analysis of Linking Adverbials in Pakistani English. International Journal of Linguistics. Vol. 6 (3). pp. 133-140.
Liu, D. (2008). Linking adverbials: An across-register corpus study and its implications. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics. Vol. 13(4), pp. 491-518.
Leech, G. & Svartvik, J. (1994). A Communicative Grammar of English. London: Longman.
Lie, L. (2012). Linking adverbials in academic writing on applied linguistics by Chinese doctoral students. Journal of English for Academic Purposes. Vol. 11, pp. 267-275.
Martin, J.R., & Rose, D. (2003). Working with discourse: Meaning beyond the clause. London: Continuum.
Rahimi, A. & Qannadzadeh, J. (2010). Quantitative usage of logical connectors in Iranians' EFL essay writing and logical and linguistic intelligences. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 5, 2012-2019.
Rahman, T. (1990). Pakistani English: The Linguistic Description of a Non-narrative Variety of English. Islamabad: National Institute of Pakistan Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University.
Van Dijk, T. A. (1977). Text and Context. London: Longman
Full Text: PDF
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
