Themes of Birth and Death in Pakistani and British English Fictions: A Corpus based Analysis

Abstract

This study presents a comparison of the themes associated with the phenomena of birth and death in Pakistani and British English fictions i.e. PEF and BEF in the vast framework of several varieties of Englishes around the world. As culture of Pakistan differs entirely from that of Britain, so are the themes which are associated with birth and death in their fictions. Different words have different associative meaning in different societies (e.g. meaning and usage of ‘dear’ or ‘clever’ is quite different in Pakistan and in England.  Truly representative corpus of English fiction, comprising various genres from both the varieties of English has been analyzed and processed through AntConc 3.2.2w (windows) 2008. The study has investigated PEF as well as BEF thoroughly on the basis of Dixon’s Semantic approach to English grammar (2005) and elaborated that the adjectives used with birth and death in both fictions are entirely different besides the universally common psychological incidents of birth and death in all human beings. The study reveals that the rituals and customs associated with birth and death are entirely different in BEF and PEF. It establishes that Pakistani variety of English uses entirely distinctive linguistic norms as compared to British variety of English.

Keywords: PEF, BEF, themes, birth, death, associative meaning.