A multidimensional study of interactive registers in Pakistani and US English. Issue 4 (26th December 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Shakir, Muhammad; Deuber, Dagmar
• Is Part Of: World Englishes. Volume 37:Issue 4(2018)
• Page Start: 607
• Page End: 623
• Publication Date: 2018-12-26
• Subjects: English language -- Foreign countries -- Periodicals; English language -- Study and teaching -- Foreign speakers -- Periodicals; English language -- Variation -- Periodicals; Intercultural communication -- Periodicals; 428.2407
• DOI: 10.1111/weng.12352
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0883-2919

Abstract

Abstract: The present study is a multidimensional analysis of spoken and interactive online registers—comments, Facebook groups, Facebook status updates, and tweets—of Pakistani English in comparison to U.S. English. Four dimensions of variation are identified, namely oral narrative, abstract informational versus first person focus, interactive focus on mental activities and feelings, and present and future activities. Dimension 1 and 2 are the most prominent indicators of regional variation, while some registers also show variation on dimensions 3 and 4. The results suggest that conveying abstract and other kind of information is the most prominent general communicative purpose in Pakistani registers. US English, in contrast, also has communicative purposes like the expression of feelings and narration, in addition to conveying information. It is also suggested that the Internet is providing new avenues of communication for non‐native speakers of English, which demands further study and inclusion of these registers in corpora of varieties of English around the world.