Sociolinguistics Lecture 4
Instructor Mr. Moazzam Ali
World Englishes & Creolistics
Pakistani English
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In Pakistan the English language is extensively used in both the electronic and print
media as well as in the domains of government, commerce, higher education, and the
military, and because of the language’s ‘new’ context of use, words from local
Pakistani culture and society are often used in English where no equivalent or
appropriate English word exists
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In recent years a great deal of attention has been paid to so-called New Englishes or
non-native varieties of English. Pakistani English is an Indigenized variety of English

It shares a majority of its linguistic features with native variety of English, but
nonetheless, it can be distinguished due to its borrowed indigenous word stock.

Urdu lexis is used in English in order to fill lexical gaps as well as to convey shades
of meaning unfamiliar in English. Pakistani English includes not only Urdu Lexis, but
also borrowings from the other languages spoken in Pakistan which are found in
contemporary English-Language as well as Urdu newspaper and other print media.
Sources of lexical transfer in Pakistani English

Islamic Culture & Religion (Roza, Imam, Madressa, Namaaz, Zakat)

Composite Indo-Pak Culture (Mushaira, Mehfil-e-Sama, Zabaan-e-Khalq)

Pakistani Languages (Loya Jirga, Buzkushi, Hartal, Malakhra)
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Sociolinguistics Lecture 4
Instructor Mr. Moazzam Ali
Semantic Aspect of Lexical Transfer
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Lexical transfer or borrowing is generally found where lexis refers to culture-specific
concepts. The notion of achieving greater degree of clarity through the use of
borrowing Lexis in journalistic writings can be well illustrated by the given example.
Some loan words, like chaddar, mazar, maulvi, chittar and parchi, are used in variety
of contexts in Pakistani English in both their literal as well as figurative senses.
It is also related that he (Haddu Khan) would begin his khayals in a very restful and
slow tempo. After singing both asthai and antara in that way he would sing boltaans
and taans, and then the slow khayal would be followed by a fast chhota khayal.
(The Frontier Post)
Translations of the music lexis in the above given example cannot capture the true
essence of such lexis.
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Sociolinguistics Lecture 4
Instructor Mr. Moazzam Ali
Grammatical Aspect
Lexical transfer is frequently accompanied by structural changes in which Urdu borrowings
under go a morphological restructuring according to the grammatical rules of the recipient
language.
Example: Big Jagirdars (Landlords) heartlessly oppress poor people living on their land.
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Agitational politics, jalsas (meetings) and jallooses (processions) have become the
preoccupation of political party workers in Pakistan.

Islamic lexis; on the other hand, often take Arabic plurals. consider, for example, the
following Arabic plurals ending in -een and –aat.
1) Four Mujahideen embraced shahadat.
2) Takbiraat were recited after Eid-prayer.
Urdu noun compounds borrowed into English frequently contain the Persian ezafe (-e- or
-i-) construction (meaning ‘of’) or the Persian co-ordinating conjunction -o- (meaning
‘and’), while the Arabic article -ul- (meaning ‘of’) often serves as compound enclitic
between two nouns.
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Sociolinguistics Lecture 4
Instructor Mr. Moazzam Ali
Borrowing as an Abrogational Tool

Abrogation of language refers to the practice in vogue in the post-colonial literatures
to defy the notions of ‘centrality’ and ‘purity’ as far as Standard English is concerned.
This practice is a major step towards the process of decolonization.
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Sociolinguistics Lecture 4
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Instructor Mr. Moazzam Ali
Many Pakistani writers use Urdu lexis as an abrogational tool in their English
writings. Some of the examples from Bapsi Sidwa’s ‘Crow Eater’ are cited below
where she uses Urdu lexical items as an abrogational tool.
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As soon as we are settled near a fire temple, I will order a jashan of thanks-giving at
our new home.
(pg 17)
 ‘Why not? Ask him to see me at thana tomorrow morning.’
(pg 118)
 At home she was full of prattle about the mela.
(pg 229)
 He wished for the tenth time he were a Mohammedan and could cover her up in a
burqa.
(pg 240)
 He was wearing loose cotton pyjamas and a sleeveless V-necked sudreh.( pg. 283)
Lexical Integration
 Urdu borrowings are integrated into English in many ways. Pakistani journalists
writing in English, for example often indicate the degree of integration of a particular
Urdu lexical item through the use or non-use of certain graphic conventions. Some of
the conventions used to write Urdu lexis in Pakistani English dailies include italics,
single or double quotation marks, capital or bold lettering, and underlining.
Pidgins, Lingua Franca and L2
 A variety of language without native speakers which arises in a language contact
situation of multilingualism, and operates as a lingua franca.
Pidgins are examples of partially targeted or non-targeted second-language learning,
developing from simpler to more complex systems as communicative requirements become more
demanding. Pidgin languages by definition have no native speakers, they are social rather than
individual solutions, and hence are characterized by norms of acceptability. (Peter Muhlhausler;
1986: 5)
 The word pidgin, formerly also spelled pigeon derives from a Chinese (Cantonese)
language which means ‘business’
 In an educational publication related to vernacular languages in Paris 1953, UNESCO
defined a lingua franca related to vernacular languages as ‘a language which is used
habitually by people whose mother tongues are different in order to facilitate
communication between them’.
Pidgin Classification according to Grammatical Complexity
 A jargon (or pre-pidgin) has relatively unstable structure, draws on a limited
vocabulary and is frequently augmented by gestures.
 A stable pidgin (usually just labeled ‘pidgin’, and to which Muhlhausler’s definition
best applies) is one which has a recognizable structure and fairly developed
vocabulary, but which is in practice limited to a few domains (for example, the
workplace, a marketplace and so on).
 An expanded pidgin is one which has developed a level of sophistication of structure
and vocabulary as a consequence of being used in many contexts, including
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Sociolinguistics Lecture 4
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Instructor Mr. Moazzam Ali
interpersonal and domestic settings, as well as some formal uses like public speeches
or political pamphlets.
Creoles are languages which develop out of pidgins and become the first language of
a speech community.
Pidginization
The process by which a pidgin develops is called pidginization. This process of pidginization
involves:
 Admixture
 Reduction
 Simplification
Creation of Pidgin and Creoles
Pidgins and creoles arise out of a diversity of circumstances, including certain types of
trade, some situations of war and large-scale movements of people. We shall sample
some of these below.
New World Slavery
In the seventeenth century, Europeans established settler colonies in the New World in order
to develop plantations for crops like tea and tobacco. Many indigenous peoples of the
Caribbean (for example the Carib Indians) resisted attempts by the European colonists to
enslave them, and were often decimated in the process. Those who survived often fell prey to
European diseases. The plantation involved the use of imported labour on a massive scale
under the control of small numbers of European masters.
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The Sale Triangle (Europe – Africa – ‘New World’)
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Sociolinguistics Lecture 4
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Instructor Mr. Moazzam Ali
Creolists are concerned with the type of communication that must have taken place not
only between slave master and slave (‘vertical communication’) but also between slave
and slave (‘horizontal communication’). Since masters and slaves did not share a
common language, and slaves from different areas would also have had difficulties in
communicating with each other, it was inevitable that a pidgin should develop. One
unresolved question is whether this pidgin crystallised in the slave factories or during the
middle passage or only in the New World plantations. Sociolinguists now accept a
dichotomy between fort creoles and plantation creoles. The former developed at the
fortified posts along the West African coast, where European forces held slaves until the
arrival of the next slave ship (Arends 1995: 16). Guinea Coast Creole English, according
to Hancock (1986), is one such fort creole. Plantation creoles, which are more numerous,
evolved in the New World colonies, under the dominance of different European
languages. These languages are called superstrate languages, since they were socially
dominant, in contrast with the substrate languages of the slaves.
Under these conditions, a pidgin is assumed to have evolved for both vertical and
horizontal communication, drawing on elements from various languages including
several African languages and the dominant European language.
Trade
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Pidgins may develop in certain types of trading activities where several linguistic groups
of people are involved and interpreters are initially unavailable. Naga Pidgin is a
contemporary pidgin of the mountain regions of north-east India, spoken by people in
Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh. It seems to have originated as a market language in
Assam in the nineteenth century among the Naga people. It is based on Assami (or
Assamese), an Indo-European language of Assam, whereas the Naga people speak
Tibeto-Burmese languages which are historically unrelated to Assami. Today the pidgin
serves as a linking language (or lingua franca) between people who have about twentynine distinct languages among them (Sreedhar 1974). It is being creolised among small
groups like the Kacharis in the town of Dimapur, and among the children of interethnic
marriages.
European settlement
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The movement of settlers from Europe to places where the indigenous population had
not been decimated or moved into reservations, and where a slave population did not
form the labour force (e.g. Papua New Guinea, China, India, East Africa),
necessitated the learning of the indigenous languages (e.g. of Hindi in North India
and Swahili in East Africa). Sometimes pidgins developed especially where contacts
between Europeans and indigenous people were restricted to the domain of
employment. Fanakalo is a stable pidgin, spoken in parts of South Africa, which
probably originated from contacts between English people and Afrikaners with Zulus
in the province of Natal in the mid-nineteenth century (Mesthrie 1989).
Its vocabulary is drawn mainly from Zulu and to a lesser extent from English and
Afrikaans. The structure of Fanakalo, however, seems closer to English than any
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Sociolinguistics Lecture 4
Instructor Mr. Moazzam Ali
other language. This stable pidgin, which later proved useful in the highly
multilingual mines of South Africa, shows no sign of creolising.
War
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American wars in Asia (Japan, Korea, Vietnam and Thailand) since the end of the
Second World War have resulted in a marginal, unstable jargon or pre-pidgin called
Bamboo English. It seems to have been a simplified form of English, with many
words taken from local languages (Schumann 1974).
Labour migration
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Within a colonised country, people belonging to different areas or different ethnic
groups might be drawn into the work sphere without being overtly forced. Such
accelerated contact might necessitate a quick means of communication, giving rise to
pidgins. This has happened in many of the Pacific Islands, where a form of pidgin
English developed, for example Tok Pisin in the island of Papua New Guinea. Some
linguists believe that industrial pidgins have come into being in Western and Middle
Eastern centres which have attracted a large, multinational workforce in recent times
(see the box on Gastarbeiterdeutsch below). Whether these are pidgins or forms of
second-language acquisition that resemble pidgins is not clear.
Linguistic Characteristics of Pidgin
Since a Pidgin strives to be a simple and effective form of communication, the grammar,
phonology, etc, are as simple as possible.
Phonology
Pidgin consists of basic Vowel, like /a/ /i/ /u/ /e/ /o/ and consonants. There are less
codas within syllables (Syllables consist of a vowel, with an optional initial consonant).
There are no tones, such as those found in West African and East Asians languages.
Stress is at fixed locations.
Lexicon
Words from lexifier languages and they belong to open classes (nouns, verbs, adjectives).
There are no or few prepositions, conjunctions, determiners, etc.
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Polysemy (water--‘water, lake, river, spring, tear’)
Multifunctionality (sik—as verb and as a noun)
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Sociolinguistics Lecture 4
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Instructor Mr. Moazzam Ali
Circumlocution (gras bilong fes-- ‘beard’)
Compounding (big maus ‘conceited --literally big mouth’)
Grammatical Structure
Pidgins have very few suffixes and grammatical markers of categories that are mandatory
in the ‘input’ languages. Tense often has to be inferred from context in many pidgins, or
is expressed by temporal adverbs like before, today, later, by-and-by and already.
Sentences are simple and short with no embedding
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No can----------- cannot.
Talk stink---------- speaking bad about someone.
Wat doing--------- what are you doing?
If I come stay go, an you no stay come, wat foa I go?-----------If I come and you are
not there, why should I go?
The following is “A Mother Goose” nursery (The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe)
translated into Hawaiian Pidgin:
Dere waz one ol Tutu(Tutu-grandmother)
Stay living in one slippa(slippa-sandals)
She get choke kids---(choke- a lot)
Planny braddahs and one sistah- ( sistah-sister) (braddahs-brothers) (Planny- plenty)
But no da poi(Poi-a Hawaiian food made of taro)
Den broke dere okoles
(Okoles-butt)
And sent dem moi moi
(Moi Moi-sleep)
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Sociolinguistics Lecture 4
Instructor Mr. Moazzam Ali
Depidginization
The linguistic processes of complication, purification and expansion, by which a pidgin
or pidginized variety of language comes to resemble or become identical with the source
language from which it was originally derived. This may occur if the speakers of pidgin
have extensive contacts with the speakers of source language.
Depidginization consists of three processes
1. Complication
2. Purification
3. Expansion
Creole
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When a pidgin is acquired as a first language by a generation of children, it becomes
a creole. A creole thus, unlike a pidgin, is a natural language.
The term comes from the Portuguese crioulo, and originally meant a person of
European descent who had been born and brought up in a colonial territory. Later, it
came to be applied to other people who were native to these areas, and then to the
kind of language the spoke.
Creoles are typically classified based on their lexifier language, e.g., English-based,
French based, etc.
Decreolization
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Creoles tend to co-exist with their lexifier languages in the same speech community.
Since they are based on these languages, at least lexically, they come to be viewed as
“nonstandard” varieties of the lexifier language.
Under desires for overt prestige, some speakers start to move away from the creole to
the standard lexifier language, in what is often called decreolizatoin.
Post-Creole Continuum
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As a result of decreolizatoin, a range of creole varieties exist in a continuum. The
variety closest to the standard language is called the acrolect, the one least like the
standard is called the basilect, and in between these two is a range of creole varieties
that are called mesolects:
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Sociolinguistics Lecture 4
Instructor Mr. Moazzam Ali
<-------------------------------------------------->
Acrolect
Mesolect
Basilect
Theories about the Origins of Pidgin Language
These theories can be broadly grouped into three types: (1) monogenetic theories; (2)
theories of independent parallel development; and (3) theories of linguistic universals.
1. Monogenesis
2. Independent Parallel Development
3. Linguistic Universals
References
Karchu,Braj B. 1978. The South Asian English, The University of Michigan Press.
Kachru , Yamuna. 1980. Aspects of Hindi Grammar.Delhi,1989.
Baumgardner, Robert j. 1987. Utilizing Pakistani Newspaper English to Teach Grammar.
World Englishes : 241-52 The English Language in Pakistan National Book Foundation,
Islamabad
Baumgardner, Robert j. 1990. The Indigenization of English in Pakistan .The English
Language in Pakistan National Book Foundation, Islamabad.
Rehman,T.1992, Pakistani English, NIPS,Islamabad.
Todd,L.1987.AnIntroduction to Linguistics,Longman Group Uk Limited.
Jack richards,Platt John, Weber Heidi .1985. Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics
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