Pakistan Languages and Humanities Review

Countering Islamophobia and Muslim Stereotypes in Ali Eteraz’s Native Believer

2025-10-01T00:12:27+05:00

This research paper attempts to delineate the strategies adopted by American Muslims to counter Islamophobia and Muslim Stereotypes in Ali Eteraz’s novel Native Believer (2016). Employing Sherene Razack’s theoretical perspectives from her book: Nothing has to Make Sense: Upholding White Supremacy through anti-Muslim Racism (2022), the paper focuses on post-9/11 Muslim lives in America and the worldwide. The paper charts M’s journey from being a secular Muslim toward a reckless tramp and then an American civilian completely assimilated into the American society. The colonial encounter between Western powers and Muslim-majority regions, spanning centuries of conquest, colonization and cultural imposition has left indelible marks on both the colonizer and the colonized. As the securitization of Islam, War on Terror, and proliferation of surveillance measures serve to perpetuate a cycle of suspicion and discrimination and affect Muslim communities living at diaporic spaces, the paper shows that generally a Muslim has to devise an assimilative approach to survive in such a society

Silencing Women: A Textual Analysis of Honor Killing in Awais Khan’s No Honour (2021)

2025-10-06T12:50:51+05:00

This paper aims to explores the phenomenon of Honor Killing and investigate the main reasons of honor killing. Also, the researcher aims to highlights the traumas faced by the protagonist due to honor killing and explain how the main character destabilizes the hierarchal structure of the patriarchy in Awais Khan’s No Honour (2021). Honor Killing remains one of the main social issues in Pakistan. In 2021, over 470 cases of honor killing were reported in Pakistan, but it is estimated that around 1000 women are killed in the name of honor every year in Pakistan. Awais Khan’s No Honour (2021) is the portrayal of a misogynistic society, a society where age-old rules are obeyed, and women are suppressed through different social practices. The papers employ Paul Churchill’s notion of understanding and ending of Honor killing to examine how the protagonist escapes from the prejudice and patriarchal society. This study uses textual analysis as a methodological framework to interpret dialogues, paragraphs, symbols to understand the phenomenon of honor killing. Conclusion: The study maintains that there are several social practices that leads to the honor killing. This study also shows the physical, psychological and sexual impacts of honor killing in the selected text of Honor killing. The study further concludes that honor killing is rooted especially in the honor of women in Pakistan. The researcher recommends that other novels or literary texts may also be explored to understand the notion of Honor Killing.

The Illusion of Consent: Hegemony and Resistance in Ama Ata Aidoo’s Our Sister Killjoy

2025-10-06T15:14:41+05:00

This research paper examines Ama Ata Aidoo’s Our Sister Killjoy (1977) to expose postcolonial African elites being ideologically framed by Western worldviews, thereby perpetuating cultural and psychological domination even in the absence of physical colonization. The primary objective is to investigate the mental conditioning of African self-exiles who adopt and internalize Western ideologies with little resistance, reinforcing a passive form of consent. The secondary aim is to examine the process by which this internalization occurs, thereby revealing the subtle mechanisms of neocolonial control. It critiques the postcolonial notions of hegemony and consent through Sissie’s experiences in Europe and her reflections on neocolonial Africa. A qualitative research design is employed using textual analysis of Aidoo’s novel as the primary data source. The research is grounded in Antonio Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony and consent. Key findings reveal that the illusion of consent is maintained through ideological conditioning that frames Western values as universal and superior. They are presented under the guise of politeness or modernity, not through coercion.

Study of Social Factors Affecting Academic Achievement of Students at Higher Secondary Level

2025-10-08T21:20:56+05:00

This study explores how social factors affect the academic achievement of higher secondary students, focusing on parental attitudes, teacher support, and peer involvement. Main research objective was to determine the relationship between peer, parents and teachers’ involvement and students’ academic performance. Using a quantitative survey design, data were collected from 320 randomly selected students from three branches of Punjab College, Islamabad. Analysis through descriptive statistics and Pearson’s correlation revealed significant positive relationships between parental encouragement, teacher guidance, and peer collaboration with academic success. Findings indicate that achievement is shaped not only by individual effort but also by students’ social environments. Constructive home–school partnerships, supportive teacher–student interactions, and cooperative peer relationships help in learning motivation and self-efficacy. Study provides empirical evidence from Pakistan’s secondary education context, emphasizing that academic success should be understood as a socially influenced and collaboratively constructed phenomenon. It recommends promoting parent–teacher collaboration and integrating peer-support strategies into school improvement programs.

English Verb Switching in Balochi: Patterns, Functions and Sociolinguistic Implications

2025-10-11T23:57:04+05:00

This study investigates the phenomenon of English verb switching into Balochi, a growing sociolinguistic trend in Balochistan. The objective of this research is to examine the intensity, patterns, and sociolinguistic motivations behind the use of English verbs in Balochi discourse. Data were collected from seven districts of Balochistan, Quetta, Hub, Turbat, Gwadar, Jafarabad, Sibi, and Lasbela representing diverse sociolinguistic contexts. A total of 1,050 participants (150 from each district), aged between 12 and 50, were interviewed in different educational institutions, language centers, and marketplaces focusing on situations where English verb switching was most likely to occur. The English verb switching was transcribed and analyzed to gauge the influences of verb switching. The results of the Chi-square software specified a considerable number of English verbs switching into Balochi in the urban areas than the rural ones. This is very alarming for a language which has already been ignored and marginalized.

Influence of American and British English on Pakistani Learners’ Vocabulary: A Study of Attitudes and Choices

2025-10-14T12:10:21+05:00

The present research addresses the influence of the American and the British English on the Pakistani learner’s vocabulary in the light of their attitude and preference along with the socio- cultural factors that influence their vocabulary. The research has aimed at determining what variety of English either American or British, Pakistani students prefer and how education and social media as well as socio-cultural backgrounds impact their decision. English is an official and educational language in Pakistan but students are getting increasingly exposed to different global versions of the language in the social media, technology and entertainment. The current study has applied a mixed methods design for a data of 100 students of the university, a semi-structured interview and questionnaires. Quantitative analysis has revealed that 58 percent of learners were rather oriented to American vocabulary primarily due to the contact with media and the presence of the online version and 37 percent to the prestige of academic and formal English, which was British. Another pragmatic adaptation has also been identified in the qualitative data which is pragmatic alternation among the varieties by the learners depending on the context and the communicative purpose. The findings illustrate that the Pakistani learners are bilinguals which is attributed to the hybrid nature of the Pakistani English. The study has concluded that globalization and the educational traditions are all implicated in the process of the vocabulary choices of the learners. The study recommends that English language teaching in Pakistan need to adopt and integrate the two varieties so as to facilitate lexical awareness and communicative fluency.

Ideological Orientations in Pakistani Primary English Textbooks: A Critical Discourse Analysis

2025-10-16T16:14:42+05:00

This study inspects the various ideologies embedded within the Oxford University Press (OUP) English textbooks at the elementary level in Pakistan, questioning how pedagogical materials are used as a tool for expressing ideology. Its main aim is to investigate the spectrum of sociocultural, religious, and political discourses that are encoded in both the previous (2018) and the new (2021) Single National Curriculum (SNC) editions, and to identify the similarities and differences between them. Utilizing a qualitative research design, the study applies Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of Critical Discourse Analysis to explore the power relations, value CDA model, and ideologies behind the textual and visual stories. The study finds that both of the textbooks deliberately encode multiple dominant ideologies (religious, nationalistic, social and ethical) which aim to shape the moral consciousness and civic identity of the students. Although both editions reproduce the patriarchal structures that shape Pakistani society, the SNC aligned textbook makes a thin attempt to change the narrative by representing women in more participatory and public roles, but only within the conditioned approval of others. The study concludes by offering critical advice to textbook writers, curriculum writers and policy makers in the Punjab Department of Education to consider and understand the ideological implications of curriculum representation

Reimagining Gender Identities in Gone Girl: A Jungian Archetypal Analysis of the Collective Unconsciousness

2025-10-16T16:29:45+05:00

This study aims to explore how the writer challenges as well as critiques gender stereotypes in the novel Gone Girl written by Gillian Flynn. Departing from the stereotypical characterization, the novel present characters that constantly sway between the traditional masculine and feminine traits. A qualitative research design was employed to map the characters’ actions from a psychological perspective. The findings of the study suggest that the traditional male and female stereotypes that have been glorified in the American society for a long time do not have any scientific basis. Instead they are just over- generalizations of ascribed traits associated with men and women within the institution of marriage. The future researches may extend the Jungian theoretical framework to non- Western narratives in order to reshape the socio-cultural perceptions of gender and identity. Furthermore, the comparative analysis of male and female archetypes within different contemporary novels can uncover new dimensions of gender representations

The Dynamics of Right-Wing Populism: A Comparative Study of Political Leadership and Institutional Impact in Pakistan and Iran

2025-10-21T13:22:21+05:00

This paper examines the use of nationalism, religion, and anti-elite rhetoric by right-wing populist leaders Imran Khan in Pakistan and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran to achieve political power. Populist leaders tend to emerge when the masses are discontented with the political system. In Pakistan and Iran, Khan and Ahmadinejad relied on the symbols of religion and national pride to demonstrate themselves as the defenders of the common people, despite the fact that there are two systems of these countries, one of which is democratic and another theocratic. Paper applied qualitative comparative case study. Both leaders did manage to gain the support of masses through emotional and symbolic appeals. Enhance the democratic institutions, safeguard judicial independence, advance political education, and adopt reasonable economic reforms to narrow the dangers of populist leadership. The comparison should be expanded in future research in order to detect global patterns.

Displacement, an Identity Crisis Metaphor: A Postcolonial Study of Kureishi's The Black Album

2025-10-23T01:55:15+05:00

This study aims to investigate how displacement functions as a metaphor for identity crisis, with a specific focus on identifying the relationship between geographical locations and identity formation. For this purpose, the study analyses Kureishi's The Black Album applying the theoretical framework of Bhabha, particularly his concept of "Third Space". It also investigates the factors responsible for identity crisis—liminality, hybridity, mimicry, interstices, fragmented self, and narcissism—which contribute to the construct or deconstruction of an individual's identity. The study employs Textual Analysis methodology, utilizing Latent Coding to discover the underlying meaning within the texts. The findings reveal that the characters voluntarily choose to displace themselves from their homelands to the host land in pursuit of their aspirations, dreams, and desires. They struggle to assimilate into the host culture by mimicking the lifestyles and norms of the foreign people. Their attempts to adopt foreign norms and lifestyles fail. They become hybrid individuals trapped in the vicious cycle of belongingness—caught between two worlds, belonging fully to neither. This in-between situation accentuates a profound identity crisis. The analysis also reveals that the characters face intense discrimination and marginalization in their journey of dislocation and attempted relocation.

The Dialectic of the Individual and Crowd in Canetti’s Auto-da-Fe

2025-10-26T18:02:25+05:00

This paper examines the dialectic of the individual and crowd in Elias Canetti’s novel, Auto-da-Fé (1935) in a bid to understand crowd’s power to commit violence against the individual self and thinking. Qualitative researches in nature, the authors have employed Theodor W. Adorno’s theorizations to analyze the violent nature of modern ‘crowd society’ pitted against the individual autonomy. Along with utilizing ‘Crowd Theory’, this study also employs Michel Foucault’s ideas regarding madness to understand the constructed nature of sane and insane in relation to power for suppressing the individual identity and freedom. This research, while discussing the tussle between crowd and individual, opines that crowd-led society is essentially paranoid. The paranoia of ‘crowd society’ creates the binaries of normal/abnormal and sane/insane leading to the loss of individual self and dignity. The study is significant and relevant in understanding the modern capitalist society and the populist movements across the world.

Toxic Positivity in Feminist Discourse: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Shiza Shahid’s TED Talk

2025-10-26T18:18:17+05:00

This paper explores the discursive construal of toxic positivity in the TED Talk by Shiza Shahid. The study aims to determine transitivity patterns, processes and participants, and explains how they linguistically build toxic positivity, further explaining them in socio- cultural settings. The study applied both the Transitivity Model of Halliday (1985) for textual analysis and the three-dimensional model of Critical Discourse Analysis of Fairclough (1989) to the interpretation and explanation of a text. The results showed that most of the processes were Material, Relational, and Mental, which describe self-belief, moral strength, and emotional composure as alternatives to structural critique and thus linguistically construe toxic positivity. The work is relevant to discourse analysts, feminist scholars, and communication researchers because it helps shed light on how motivational feminist discourse can propagate the false hope and make endurance a moral obligation instead of a right of the group.

An Acoustic Analysis of Stop Consonants in Gojri Language

2025-10-27T12:48:38+05:00

The purpose of the study is to identify the stop consonants of Gojri language and measure their acoustic properties. Gojri is an Indo- Aryan language, which is spoken by Gujjar community in Azad Jammu and Kashmir. The study is descriptive in nature and used mixed method approach. Data were collected from twenty native speakers of the language. Identified stops are recorded in VCV context for acoustic analysis. The results show that Gojri language contains twelve stop consonant sounds. These sounds are produced from diverse places of articulation; bilabial, dental, retroflex and velar. Voicing contrast shows three way voicing with no voiced aspirated segment. Acoustic analysis reveals that VOT, closure duration and burst and major acoustic cues which vary in terms of place of articulation and voicing. It is the first acoustic analysis of Gojri stop consonants and further researches can be conducted on segmental and supragemental features of the language.