Tales Told by God: Stylistic Peculiarities of Qrua’nic Narratives.

Abstract The religious seminaries (Madaris) 1 of Pakistan have been a hot topic of discussion in the national and international media. These Madaris are reminiscent of the ancient education system of Islam. They attracted people’s attention during the last two decades and especially after the 11th September 2001 incident of New York. Another aspect of interest was their role in the Islamic insurgence (Jihad) waged in various parts of the world particularly in Afghanistan and Kashmir. These institutions impart orthodox education based on centuries old syllabus called Dars-i Nizami. The administrators are disinclined to any slight change in the contents of the syllabus thus bringing them to an open conflict with the modem education system and western culture. The Madaris have been divided on the basis of religious sects i. e. Shia, Sunni and Ahl-i-Hadith. Of them Sunnis are further splintered into many sub-sects such as Deobandis, Brelvis, etc. But their adherence to the primitive education, Jihad and abhorrence for the western civilization is almost the same. Despite repeated reference to these Madaris, there are many misconceptions or disinformation about them In the present paper, an attempt has been made to remove these misconceptions and present a true picture. Besides, historical perspective, vital statistics, curricula and problems and prospects have discussed in the paper in hand

Analysis of Marked and Unmarked Choices of Code by Pakistani Bilingual Students

The present study focuses on the social and pragmatic motivations for codeswitching between Urdu-English in the language of Pakistani students in an educational setting. Using Markedness Model as the guiding theory, this research is an attempt to explore the impact of language environment and text types (referred to as discourse types in line with Hynd & Chase's [1991] study) on the verbal behaviour of Pakistani educated bilinguals. Students listened to three different texts — narrative, expository and instructional —in the form of audios in different languages —English, Urdu and Pakistani' —placed in order through Graeco Latin Square. The data is collected through directive interaction from a sample of 108 participants from public sector colleges in Islamabad. The participants' responses to questions on what they had heard in the audios were audio-taped and transcribed which provided data for the study. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used for data analysis. The findings for the qualitative content analysis demonstrate that despite limited proficiency in the second/foreign language as learners, the participants have a tendency to make marked choices of code to heighten their desire for higher social and economic status. The quantitative results reveal that participants are more sensitive to language environment regarding their use of English words (MS=16784.410, F (2,214) = 48.54, p< .001) and Urdu words (MS=47436.565, F (2,214) = 71.67, p< .001) as compared to discourse type, which showed no significant effect on the frequency of mixing codes. It also suggests that factors of gender, educational level and language background have some significance but in order to be polite in their responses, students attempt to accommodate their speech with the environment. The study implies that codeswitching in educational discourse is one of the major factors promoting bilingualism in the country. Implications for research on Pakistani's future status as a mixed code or a developing creole are given at the end. In the present study, Urdu-English codeswitched language has been called Pakistani which is different from Pakistani English.