Pakistani English – The Linguistic Description of a Non-Native Variety of English

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This study began life as an M.Litt thesis at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow in 1989. As I broke my arm when I was just about to begin writing it the actual writing in longhand was done by my wife Rehana Rahman. I used to dictate the book to her and she used to write it in our flat in beautiful Cumbernauld. I do not quite remember just how she drew the diagrams but I did some sketching with the left hand and she must have refined it for the person who word-processed it on the computer. I thank her for this and for looking after all of us during that difficult period. When I returned to Pakistan and joined the National Institute of Pakistan Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University, the director of the Institute, Professor Fateh Mohammad Malik asked me to get this book published. So, this book was first published in the NIPS monograph series in 1990. Out of the three monographs published in that year only this one was sold out in a few years because it was relevant to the new discipline of English Language Teaching (ELT) which had emerged in Pakistan in the late eighties and early nineties. A slightly revised version was reprinted in 2009 when I myself was the director of NIPS. As there was no comparable description of Pakistani English (PE) photocopies of the book were used by students all over Pakistan. Now, the PCL-Press in Graz, Austria, has kindly agreed to publish it. I am highly grateful to Professor Rudolf Muhr of the University of Graz for having encouraged me to submit the manuscript for consideration of the editorial board of the press. This will make the book available to readers across the world and especially to European ones. I hope this study helps to dispel the popular notions about Pakistani English in Pakistan. These notions appear to be that this is not a variety of Eng-lish but just a mass of ignorant errors which must not be encouraged. I am sure I would have persisted in this view myself if I had not come across Dr. Robert J. Baumgardner’s pioneering articles on Pakistani English. I, therefore, end with compliments to Baumgardner upon whose work I seek to build the foundations of a serious academic analysis and description of Pakistani English. I should add here that this work is of the late 1980s and work on non-native varieties of English has gone far beyond this pioneering attempt of an M.Phil student in 1988-89. The minor revisions I have made do not take all this work into ac-count. The value of this book then, such as it is, is simply to make a work which has historical significance because of its pioneering nature, available to stu-dents in this field. While they may themselves have progressed far more in such kind of studies, such endeavours—incomplete, flawed and even erroneous at places—are the stepping stones upon which their far grander edifices have been erected. It is, thus, with a sense of humility that I offer this work to read-ers far more knowledgeable and sophisticated than I was in 1989 when I worked on it in Scotland. I take this opportunity to thank all those who saw it through the PCL-Press. As always, the faults in the book are entirely mine. Tariq Rahman Ph.D, D. Litt (Sheffield, U.K). Distinguished National Professor and Dean, Beaconhouse National University, Lahore. 14 February 2022

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published by PCL-PRESS (Graz)

July 1, 2022 | 91 pages | ISBN 978-3-7565-1610-0