A Comparison of Conjunctive Cohesion between Pakistani and British English Newspapers’ Opinion Articles
Keywords:
conjunctive cohesion, grammatical cohesion, Pakistani English, World EnglishesAbstract
Pakistani English has been forming and developing norms different from standard British/American English. This study explores the use and patterns of conjunctive cohesion, as elaborated and categorized by Halliday and Hasan (1976) and revised by Halliday and Matthiessen (2013) in Pakistani and British Newspapers’ Opinion Articles from November 2023. Twenty-eight opinion articles from the Pakistani English newspaper ‘The Express Tribune (TET)’ and 25 from the British English newspaper ‘The Guardian (TG)’ were collected and saved into two separate text files for analysis. Frequencies of 80 conjunctions (which are categorized into three categories: elaboration, extension, and enhancement; and further into nine subcategories) were calculated by Anthony’s (2023) AntConc software (version 4.2.4). Pakistani data showed a higher frequency of Extending Conjunctions than British data. However, the use of both elaborating and enhancing conjunctions is higher in British writing than in Pakistani writing. The study revealed extending conjunctions (‘and,’ ‘but,’ ‘or’ being the top 3 in both data) as the most used items by Pakistani and British writers; results also suggested excessive use of ‘and’ among Pakistani writers. Yet when it comes to complex conjunction items, the cohesive choices of both Pakistani and native English writers show differences.
References
Ahmad, M., Mahmood, M. A., & Siddique, A. R. (2019). Organisational skills in academic writing: A study on coherence and cohesion in Pakistani research abstracts. Languages, 4(4), 92.
Alasmri, I., & Kruger, H. (2018). Conjunctive markers in translation from English to Arabic: A corpus-based study. Perspectives, 26(5), 767-788.
Anthony, L. (2023). AntConc (Version 4.2.4). Tokyo, Japan: Waseda University. Available from https://www.laurenceanthony.net/software
Arifianto, M. L. (2020). The conjunctive expressions and their types in Arabic news discourse: A case study on Indonesia Al-Youm Arabic news website. KnE Social Sciences.
Batool, A. (2020). A Corpus-Based Study Of Conjunctive Cohesion In Pakistani Research Articles. Unpublished thesis. Government College University Faisalabad.
Baumgardner, R. J. (1988). The Pakistanization of English. Higher Education News, 8(12), 2-7.
Baumgardner, R. J. (Ed.). (1993). The English Language in Pakistan. Oxford University Press, USA.
Cerban, M. (2020). Characteristics of journalistic language in British newspapers. Journal of Romanian Literary Studies, 20, 189-194.
Crystal, D. (2003). English as a global language. Cambridge university press.
Dang, D. (2020). Grammatical cohesion in political discourse of Vietnamese newspapers and English newspapers. International Journal of Advanced Scientific Research and Management, 5(2).
Ganie, R., Sinar, T. S., & Yusuf, M. (2021). Conjunctive Markers in Students’ Theses; Systemic Functional Perspective.
Hajkova, A. (2022). Conjuncts in newspaper discourse (Doctoral dissertation, Masarykova univerzita, Pedagogická fakulta).
Halliday, M. A. K., & Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. London: Longman.
Halliday, M. A. K., & Matthiessen, C. M. (2013). Halliday's introduction to functional grammar. Routledge.
Halliday, M. A. K. & Matthiessen, C.M. (2014). An introduction to Functional Grammar. 3rd eds. London: Routledge.
Hutton, L., & Curzan, A. (2019). The Grammatical Status of However. Journal of English Linguistics, 47(1), 29-54.
Haratyan, F. (2011, October). Halliday’s SFL and social meaning. In 2nd International Conference on Humanities, Historical and Social Sciences, 17(1), 260-264.
Kachru, B. B. (1982). The other tongue: English across cultures. Urbana, University of Illinois Press.
Kachru, B. B. (1985) Standards, codification and sociolinguistic realism: The English language in the Outer Circle. In Quirk Randolph & Henry G. Widdowson (eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kachru, B. B. (1992). World Englishes: Approaches, issues and resources. Language teaching, 25(1), 1-14.
Kachru, Y., & Nelson, C. L. (2006). World Englishes in Asian contexts. Hong Kong University Press: London.
Khan, H. I. (2012). The evolution of Pakistani English (PakE) as a legitimate variety of English. International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, 1(5), 90-99.
Krippendorff, K. (2018). Content Analysis: An Introduction to its Methodology. New York: Sage Publications.
Kirkpatrick, A. (2007). World Englishes: Implications for international communication and English language teaching. Cambridge University Press.
Mahboob, A., Ahmar, (2004). Pakistani English: phonology. In N. H., Kortmann, B., & Traugott, E. (eds.). A Handbook of Varieties of English.
Mahboob, A. (2009). English as an Islamic language: a case study of Pakistani English. World Englishes, 28(2), 175-189.
Mahmood, M. A. (2009). A corpus based analysis of Pakistani English. Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan.
Namaziandost, E., Nasri, M., & Keshmirshekan, M. H. (2019). Cohesive conjunctions in applied linguistics research articles among Iranian and non-Iranian researchers: A comparative corpus-based study. Journal of English Language Studies, 4(2), 101-119.
Okpala, O. C., & Chukwu, E. A. (2023). Cohesion in Selected Editorials from Two Nigerian Newspapers. Awka Journal of English Language And Literary Studies, 9(2), 127-152.
Qasim, H. M., Batool, A., & Nawaz, M. S. (2020). A corpus-based study of conjunctive cohesion in Pakistani research articles. International Journal of Linguistics and Culture, 1(2), 111 132.
Qasim, H. M., HM, S. M., & Sibtain, M. (2021). Locus of Conjunctions in Academic Writing: A Corpus-Driven Approach to Developing Writing among EFL Learners. Pakistan Languages and Humanities Review, 5(2), 432-443.
Rahman, T. (1991). Pakistani English: some phonological and phonetic features. Pergamon.
Rahman, T. (2020). English in Pakistan: Past, present and future. Functional variations in English: Theoretical considerations and practical challenges, 127-148.
Schneider, E. W. (2003). The dynamics of New Englishes: From identity construction to dialect birth. Language, 79(2), 233-281.
Shahzadi, K., Anwar, N., & Malik, M. A. (2023). A Corpus-Based Study of Temporal and Causal Conjunctions in Clause Complex: A Case of British and Pakistani Research Discourse. City University Research Journal of Literature and Linguistics, 6(1), 99-122.
Sitio, I. T., Nasution, M. N., & Nurlela, N. (2023). Cohesive Devices Realization in the Jakarta Post News Editorials: A Discourse Analysis. Deiksis, 15(1), 10-24.
Talaat, M. (2002). The sociolinguistics of English in Pakistan: Form and functions. Unpublished Ph. D. thesis. Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan.
Yasmin, S., Khan, H. I., & Mahmood, A. (2023). A Corpus-Based Study of Conjunctive Cohesion in Pakistani English Newspapers. Journal of Policy Research, 9(1).
Zulfiani, H. (2022). An analysis of conjunctions as cohesive devices in the opinion page of The Jakarta Post, Jurnal Komunikata, 2(2).
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Maham Khalid, Humaira Irfan (Author)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
You are free to:
- Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format for any purpose, even commercially.
- Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
- The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.
