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This article intends to examine academic library resources and research support services for English teachers at higher education institutions. A sample of 318 English teachers from the public sector universities has been selected through the proportionate random sampling technique. A cross-sectional survey has been conducted to collect data using an attitudinal scale. The study findings of multiple regression confirm the prediction of research support services. It is concluded that academic library resources have favorable effects on research support services for English teachers at the public sector universities of the Punjab province.

The aim of this study was to design English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course for University students enrolled in the Computer Science Department. For this purpose, academic English language needs of the students were analyzed by using a 5 point Likert scale questionnaire. Additionally, interviews were also conducted with four faculty members of the department and the data were analyzed qualitatively. Thus, mixed methods were used for collection and analyses of data. The results of the analysis of questionnaire and interviews indicate that the four language skills, namely listening, speaking, reading and writing are frequently used in students' academic context and among the four, speaking is the most frequently used skill. Students are deficient in writing and speaking skills as compared to listening and reading; therefore, speaking and writing should be given preference while designing the syllabus.

With the fast development of growing technology, the discourse has evolved rapidly encompassing both the linguistic and non-linguistic modes of communication. Specially, business discourse in the 21st century competitive world has become multimodal offering itself to be analyzed from several aspects. Advertisements reflect multi-modality when make use of both linguistic and semiotic modes. The present study with a focus on one jubilee life insurance advertisement, explicates the relationship between linguistic and non-linguistic i.e., semiotic modes to show how such ads communicate the desired message to the target audience. For the purpose, the study utilizes Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (1996) theory of Visual Grammar. This study has found that the interrelation and interdependency of multiple modes in the advertisement contribute to meaning making. The findings of the study reveal that these relationships work at three levels: firstly, between the represented participants; secondly, between the represented participants and the viewers; and lastly, between the represented participants and the actual participants i.e. the ad makers and the viewers. The researcher maintains that the 21st century multimodal texts can be better analyzed when traditional literacy joins hands with an understanding and application of visual grammar theories like that of Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (1996) theory of Visual Grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in academia is to increase opportunities and expand access to quality education by facilitating the learning of the students. The use of ICT is also equally important to create a conducive environment and develop creative thinking among the students. The main objective of the study is to examine the nexus of ICT and academic performance among students in higher education. A quantitative research design was used, and a cross-sectional research method was employed. Data were collected from students, through a questionnaire, of BS program from one of the public sector universities using a convenient sampling design. Data were analyzed by using SPSS. The results of linear regression revealed that ICT is a predictor of the academic performance of students by enhancing their skills, knowledge, CGPA, and communication skills and by engaging their potential to create a more conducive learning environment. The study recommended that ICT should only be used for positive academic purpose through monitoring mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study is a critique of the language used in a literary text i.e., The Stone Woman (2000) written by Tariq Ali, a famous Pakistani-British writer in order to find out gender disparities through transitivity analysis. For the purpose two characters, Nilofer and Selim, the female and male participants of romance scenes are selected. Following a mixed method approach, the study has collected fifty clauses as sample through purposive sampling. The greater number of clauses i.e., thirty clauses used to represent the female while the lesser number i.e., twenty clauses for the male show a biased attitude of the writer. The analysis shows that the female is described through a maximum use of all the four identified types of clauses: fifty-eight percent material, sixty percent mental, sixty-seven percent behavioral and sixty-seven percent verbal. In comparison to this the clauses used to describe the male appear with lesser frequency: forty-two percent material, forty percent mental, and thirtythree percent behavioral and verbal each. Moreover, the allocation of the participants' roles with power and authority are mostly reserved for the female: fifty-eight percent actor, sixty percent senser, sixty-seven percent sayer while the male is shown less active through maximum fifty-nine percent goal and sixty seven percent receiver roles. The findings of the study clearly show that Nilofer is more dominant and authoritative in the romance scenes as compared to Selim who is reluctant and acts only when he is encouraged by the female. Hence, the study finds that the traditionally reserved gender roles are reversed in Ali's The Stone Woman. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an investigation into the use of sexist language in Tariq Ali's novel The Book of Saladin (TBOS) by using feminist stylistics word level model. Following a qualitative content analysis, the researchers collected the relevant examples through close reading method and the data have been collected in the form of words. The discussion and analysis of the data show the different aspects related to word level like generic pronouns, naming and semantic derogation of women. The findings of the study reveal that Ali (1998) has exhibited a biased attitude towards the representation of women in his writing where they are either eliminated from the linguistic landscape through the use of masculine pronouns as generic terms or they are just the nameless creatures introduced in relation to men in their lives. Moreover, their representation is mitigated when most prestigious jobs are allotted to men and they are also semantically derogated by the derogatory terms used for them at word level. The researchers have found the toolkit of feminist stylistics as relevant and useful to unravel linguistic sexism that is incorporated in literary texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language of law is a register. Register used in banking courts has its own features. This study highlights the stylistic features of the legalese in Pakistan. Forensic linguistics helps to understand language used in legal contexts. Population of the study is legalese of banks but it is delimited to the banking case judgments, writ petitions and criminal appeals as the sample. Data has been collected from online websites of banking courts. Corpus linguistics is used as research methodology. Data analysis is done with Antconc software version 3.5.8for windows. Theoretical background is Leech and Short model (1981). The findings show complexity and an unusual usage of grammatical categories. This complexity leads to the problem of incomprehensibility and fraudulent practices. This can be simplified to help the users. A forensic linguist can provide assistance to the professionals. The pedagogical solution of this problem is need of the hour for the public at large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Greek drama is commonly believed to be the tragedy of fate and Aeschylean trilogy is, likewise, studied from Fatalistic perspectives most of the time. However, Aeschylus's vision has mostly been partially understood. This research aims to explore certain Existentialist elements in The Oresteia trilogy by Aeschylus. Since it is qualitative research, Textual Analysis has been employed to collect and analyse data. An in depth and close study of the characters has been made in the light of Sartre's concepts of 'freedom', 'responsibility' and 'existence precedes essence'. The analysis of each character reveals that Aeschylus has not presented his characters as mere puppets in the hands of fate. Instead, he has demonstrated that they are free to make their personal choices with full responsibility to build their own essence and try to lead an authentic life. The trilogy may, further, be studied in the light of other elements of existentialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an attempt to determine the factors which influence the willingness of the students to use academic libraries after lifting the COVID-19 lockdown. A quantitative study design has been opted to conduct a cross-sectional survey from students of the BS (4 Years) program of five public sector universities in the Punjab province, Pakistan. A stratified random sampling technique has opted and a sample of 1288 students has been sampled. A well-structured questionnaire having close-ended questions has been constructed to measure the response in terms of (dis)agreement. Multiple regression analysis has been applied to predict the dependent variable. The study findings assert that students are willing to use the academic library for their academic work along with the following protective measures after the COVID-19 lockdown. It depends on the enforcement of the COVID-19 related aspects. These aspects include social distancing, wearing a face mask, seating arrangements in the library, and availability of hand sanitization in the academic libraries. The study findings conclude that students have practiced physical distancing in the library, wear a mask, hand hygiene, and also have a lack of fear of infection of COVID-19 pandemic that enhances their willingness to use the academic library. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper analyses the syntactic and semantic properties of Urdu verbs with the help of machine learning techniques. In order to comprehend the syntactic and semantic characteristics of Urdu verbs the sentences were obtained from the online corpus and analysed in an algorithm. A general framework was adopted for Urdu natural language processing task (NLP) which incorporated machine learning (ML) and deep learning techniques to analyse Urdu verb text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Living in a global world interconnected linguistically results in bilingualism and multilingualism. It is need of the hour to analyze the structure of different languages. This study aims to investigate the structure of Urdu Verb Phrase by identifying its subcategories and highlighting verb-argument relationship through a comparison with those of English where needed. Urdu, a national and official language of Pakistan, is taught and read at different levels in Pakistan along with English, the other official language of Pakistan. The study is expected to assist the students working on the sentence structure of both languages with a focus on VPs. Based on the Minimalist Program the study is descriptive as it utilizes qualitative research approach. The data are collected through observation method where the native speakers of the Urdu language are observed to collect data through purposive sampling. The findings indicate that Urdu VPs show all the sub-categories as suggested by Carnie (2007) for English VPs. Moreover, Urdu VPs carry more agreement relationships to show person, number and gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media plays a significant role in the representation of social and cultural scenarios, highlighting discrimination based on ethnicity, social status, and sex. These media representations play an influential role in maintaining social constructs of binary identities, such as black or white, male or female, and middle or lower class. This study tends to explore the diversification of social and racial hierarchies portrayed in films with a focus on people categorized as 'other'. In contrast to the set pattern, the films examined in this study display multiple perspectives about images of the black people and white women and do not put them in stereotypical categories. The selected films have subverted the so-called established ideas about African-Americans being uncivilized, uneducated, and unworthy and show that all individuals regardless of the established stereotypes can achieve their dreams. Moreover, media has a link with social realities and the rampant racist scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study is aimed to explore how women and men characters are constructed through linguistic choices in Ali's novel The Book of Saladin (TBOS). Halliday's (1985) transitivity model as suggested by Mills (1995) in her Feminist Stylistics has been employed for data analysis. To strengthen the analysis, Eggins' (2004) insights are also given consideration. The data comprises 6 extracts from the novel. A sample size of 107 clauses was drawn to focus on process-participant analysis. The findings indicate that Ali (1998) in TBOS makes a use of all types of processes but with different frequency of occurrences. The women characters are portrayed mainly through Material (41%), Relational (5%) and Behavioral (5%) processes while the men characters are ascribed with more mental (9%) and verbal (4%) processes. These findings indicate that Ali (1998) has represented his women characters more active as compared to his men characters as far as romantic scenes are concerned. The current study confirms Mills (1995) claim that transitivity model is best suited to understand the depiction of gender through linguistic choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study of a one-novel corpus is an attempt to find out how women and men characters are described differently or similarly in relation to two body parts i.e. „eyes" and „face". The selected text is The Mirror of Beauty, a novel written by Shamsur Rahman Faruqi and published in 2014. The study follows a mixed method approach where qualitative analysis is based on Mills' (1995) feminist stylistic approach and quantitative analysis is carried on with the help of Wmatrix, a corpus linguistics tool. The study shows that women's body parts are fragmented to highlight their sexuality and physical attractiveness while men's anatomical parts are used to highlight their physical strength, skills and personality traits. The study also maintains that body parts other than those that are generally sexualized, can also be used to project sexuality and the traits related to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study aims to highlight the continuous postcolonial psychological violence inflicted on the proletariat class, and their perpetual struggle to cope up with their new and past traumatic histories, which shape their current positions, behavior, and relationships. Jazz is a novel about the fractured psyche of all main characters, who are suffering at two ends, one because of their pre-migration violent violence, and secondly, their post-migration miserable struggle as second class citizens. It exposes their useless struggles to lift up their status and ultimately self-respect, which all go in vain, due to the White hegemony. Past memories haunt these characters and propel them to destroy their relationships, and behave abnormally in their new lives. The study is studied under the theory of Karl Marx's theory of capitalism and Cathy Crauth theory of trauma in migrated second class citizens. It is concluded that Black’s abnormal behavior is the trace of White’s violence and their past traumas are transgenerational due to their untiring permanent sufferings. Moreover, the label of the second class citizen can never be easily tagged off. The working-class lives in the same ditch. For them, freedom means, replacement of old masters with new ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have gained attention from learners and teachers across the globe, but high dropout rate is a matter of concern, which makes it imperative to understand the reasons. From the theoretical perspective that learners learn more effectively through collaborative and socially cohesive communities, this qualitative study is focused to understand how learners experience facilitated and nonfacilitated MOOCs. It attempts to explore learners' perspectives from two different groups of learners learning the same MOOC of English for journalism. One of the groups is facilitated for the first week of the course by instructors through face‐to‐face interactions, whereas the other is not. The perspectives of the learners from both groups regarding their experiences are analyzed through comparative and contrastive thematic analysis of the data collected through participant observation and semistructured interviews of focus groups selected through purposive sampling technique. Though learning the same ESP MOOC, the learners (18–35 in age; all of them university students), register partly similar and largely contrastive learning experiences across the facilitated and nonfacilitated MOOC environments. It is found that the learners, when facilitated, develop a stronger sense of belongingness, accountability, responsibility, peer competition, networking, and solution of issues, which results in retention of the learners. This study foregrounds the effectiveness of hybrid MOOCs, in terms of retention and satisfaction of learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study tries to analyze the pluralization of nouns in Rangri language using the Word-and-Paradigm approach. Rangri is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by mostly the Rajput clans which migrated from the present-day state of Haryana. The study tries to describe, analyze and compare morphological processes of pluralization of nouns in Rangri language with those of Urdu and Punjabi described by Islam(2011) and Iqbal(2016) respectively. The data were collected using the criteria of NORM developed by Chambers and Trudgill (1998) through oral interviews with the Rangri-speaking older men and women from the rural areas of Sanghar, Nawabshah and Matiari districts of Sindh as part of a PhD research. The results showed that while most of the pluralization processes in Rangri are similar to both Urdu and Punjabi, it differs from Punjabi in vocative case forms and from Urdu in oblique and derogatory forms. The present study also proves the efficacy of Word-and-Paradigm morphology in analyzing Rangri language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study is a part of my doctoral thesis during 2017-20. Utilizing mixed method research design, it aims to develop ready-to-use templates for academic writing assistance for writing introduction section. It intends to equip researchers with ready-to-apply tool for self-sufficiency coping with problems to be faced during and post-COVID-19 scenario. ALTC (Applied Linguistics Theses Corpus) was compiled from 144 doctoral theses/dissertations from the fields of applied linguistics (following 12 by 12 matrix), consisting of 9840859 words. A list of Lexical Bundles was generated observing cutoff set by Biber et al. (1999). Utilizing the concordance lines of highly frequent LBs, a total of 8 sets of templates were designed, grouped together and briefly discussed owing to their respective functions. Each of the sets of templates presents multiple choices for selection. Using 4-word LBs has been significantly helpful in creating model templates. The developed templates have broadened the scope of the study of LBs and are an important addition to the established knowledge, useful for a number of fields, namely corpus-linguistics, corpus-based studies, EAP, ESP and applied linguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prime focus of this paper is to explore the unique syntactic features of Pakistani journalistic English. Different syntactic changes have been observed in Pakistani newspapers. Pakistani bilinguals have the tendency to make certain changes at syntactic level because of the influence of the mother tongue. These innovations and nativization of syntactic features have been explored by applying the Schneider’s (2007) model. Little attention has been given to this important aspect of Pakistani English that is developing parallel with other varieties of English. This brief paper advocates detailed studies on syntactic features of Pakistani English in different genres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sexist language degrades and belittles the dignity of an individual or group of individuals, generally females. Such careless use of language yields standardized social and cultural codes. The researches during the last four decades reflect occurrences of sexism in the curricula. The present study examines sexism imbued in the contents of the primary level English textbooks. Five textbooks being used from grades 1 to 5 have been analyzed in the light of gender theory employing Mixed Methods research. The study comes up that despite serious commitments of the Government of Pakistan to eliminate gender bias from the education setups the contents of the study material contain the discourses which reinforce the sexist construction and contribute to the transformation and naturalization of gender inequality and stereotypes. The findings imply that practical and serious efforts are required to translate the commitments of the government into reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This corpus-based study has been conducted in the realm of phraseology aiming at providing similarity and discrepancy in the usage between two synonymous nouns;type and kind. It applies Sinclair's (1991) Model of 'expanded unit of meaning'. The analysis consists of four levels: Collocation, Colligation, Semantic Preference and Semantic Prosody with the help of three softwares: iWeb BYU corpus, Just the Word based on BNC and Sketch Engine, based on two corpora: iWeb corpus and BNC. Similarity with varying degrees between the use of the nodes at the levels of Colligation and Semantic Prosody is found, whereas discrepancy at the levels of Colligation and Semantic Preference is evident. The study is unique in providing a complete description of the node items at four levels, rarely found in the available studies and helpful for lexicography and ESL pedagogy by offering detailed, accurate and complete picture with reference to contemporary real life language use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linguistic knowledge at the micro-level helps the users of language in professional and technical settings. The specialized language is registered according to its use and jargon, according to the users. The register of the law is called legalese. Where ever the legalese is not the mother tongue of its users it creates problems. The legal documents are notorious for their complexity. The Govt. Pakistan has started efforts to translate the body of law into Urdu. The present study intends to check the utility of the Urdu translation of the legalese in Pakistan. The court documents are the population of the study, but the court decisions are the selected sample. The study has taken the Panama Case decision as a sample to check its level of comprehensibility as compared to the previous practice of court decisions in English. The level of difficulty and the level of comprehensibility are two variables selected by the legal documents. The study is evaluative and descriptive in design. It is from the Forensic linguistic point of view. The sample was electronically as well as manually analyzed. The texts were prepared and distributed among randomly selected civilians whose education level was between graduation and masters as group one and lawyers as group two. They were given the text to go through the two documents, one in English and the other in Urdu. It was assumed that the translation of the technical language of the law would help in understanding the mother tongue of the users. It aimed at analyzing the scope of translation of the technical legal language. The general findings of the study indicated that the comprehensibility level increased in Urdu translation in the general parts of the document, but the complexity level of the understanding of legal language remained almost the same. This was due to the density of the legal register, which comprises more than half of the whole text. The Urdu translation has limited success in improving the level of comprehension is even more difficult to understand the absence of a proper database. It is the need of the hour to bring about some innovations in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]