The Socio-Economic Implications of Decline in Artisanal Fishing and its Effect on Women: A Case Study of Shams Pir Island, Karachi

Artisanal fishing is carried out in the coastal villages of Karachi. Through centuries, these fishing villages have maintained their traditional practices of fishing. Shams Pir Island is in vicinity of Karachi coast. The main occupation of islanders is artisanal fishing which is extremely threatened by various factors. Historically, in coastal communities of Karachi, women were part of fishing and its related activities. With the decline in traditional fishing methods, females have been withdrawn from fishing work. Implications of this process have been drastic for fishing households such as increased poverty, unemployment, environmental degradation etc. The research is conducted to highlight these problems especially from gender perspective. It is exclusively based on females of Shams Pir Island. Female’s socio-economic conditions, family status, perceptions on different contemporary issues pertaining to the endangered livelihood of their family and its relation with environmental changes is investigated in particular. In total, sixty women representing fishing households, few community leaders and representatives of fisher folk’s NGO were interviewed. The results emphasized the livelihood issues of females and their perceptions on environment and climate change. The vulnerabilities of females in fishing communities have been discussed in detail. ______

Cultural and Ideological Representations Through Pakistanization of English: A Linguistic Critique of Pakistani-American Fiction

This study investigates the nature, scope and implications of and reasons for Pakistanization of English in Pakistani-American fiction. It draws upon the conceptual frameworks developed by Fowler (1996) and Muthiah (2009), and employs earlier models offered by Kachru (1983), Baumgardner, Kennedy and Shamim (1993), Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffins (2002), and the recent ones by Chelliah (2006), and Muthiah (2009) from the fields of linguistic criticism, sociocultural linguistics, world Englishes and postcolonial studies. Three Pakistani-American fiction works, namely, An American Brat by Bapsi Sidhwa, Home Boy by H. M. Naqvi and In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin, are selected for separate analyses under these models that are then converged into a three-dimensional model for postcolonial linguistic critique. It was found that all the texts under study follow postcolonial language ideology. This is where the findings of this research diverge from those given by Muthiah (2009) who asserts that fiction writers of the works under her study adopt colonial language ideology by constructing Indian English as substandard variety. However the texts under this study, by employing the strategies of abrogation and appropriation, and techniques of hybrid innovations and lexical borrowings, etc., ‘Pakistanize’ English, and represent and counter-represent a variety of cultural and ideological beliefs, norms and practices. This study also demonstrates that Pakistanization of English in Pakistani-American fictional works is indicative of the ongoing process of linguistic hybridity where English is negotiating with indigenous linguistic insurgency to accelerate the emergence of ‘Urdish.’ This thesis acknowledges Pakistani English as a variety of English as sixteen characteristic linguistic features of its own are found employed in the texts under study. This acknowledgment reinforces the findings of some of the previous studies in the area such as Mahboob (2009), Uzair (2011), Khan (2012), etc. However, the frequency of Pakistani expressions used in each of the texts under study remains formulaic, and is below 0.50%.