Freedom of the Press: The War on Words (1977-1978)

Journalism in Pakistan has passed through successive phases of trials and tribulations. The crises journalism had to undergo since independence had their origin both in the state policies as well as the authoritarianism embedded in the society. The book under review does not claim to divulge into the societal challenges which have emerged more visibly in the last three or four decades, especially, in the context of the spread of religious extremism and ethnic and other types of militancy in the society. Studies need to be done on these aspects as well as the external factors that have had impact on the growth and the content of media. The latter has come in the garb of globalization that has greatly affected the local environment and has come to strongly affect, if not directly dictate, what the media should encompass and present. Leaving the societal and global aspects aside, the role of the state and the successive governments has a lot to offer to be written about by way of what the media has endured in the last seventy plus years. It doesn’t need too much of pondering to conclude that the major pressures over media have come from the governments who, by and large, had been quite at unease with independent flow of information, and criticism of their policies. And, unfortunately, this process had begun right after Independence when newspapers’ and periodicals’ independent voice was tried to be silenced, and they were pressurized to toe the official line with respect to domestic and foreign policies. Pakistan’s independent journey, unfortunately, began with the imposition of black laws which prohibited dissent and curtailed freedom of expression in the strongest possible manner.

A Multi-Dimensional Analysis of Pakistani Learner Writing

Learner writing has been an object of key interest to researchers since long and much research has been carried out in this regard using a vast array of methodologies. Previous research on Pakistani learner English is not only limited in its scope, but has shortcomings regarding the employed methodologies, since they are mostly highly subjective and unreliable. On the other hand, a few researches are backed up with quantitative evidence as they focus on the use and frequency of individual linguistic features. Comparative studies made in this regard mostly focus on comparing Pakistani learner data with that of native speakers in order to demonstrate inadequacies in Pakistani learners’ use of English language. However, the comparisons are not only insufficient, but also fall short of a sound theoretical basis. The advent of Biber’s multi dimensional analysis approach brought with it a holistic view of language evaluation, demonstrating how patterns of co-occurring linguistic features work together to perform different functions in language. The approach triangulates quantitative analyses employing statistical techniques with qualitative interpretation of language functionality. The present study aims at presenting comparative analyses of Pakistani learner writing against other varieties of World Englishes on the basis of this approach. The purpose of this study is to explore variation that lies between Pakistani English and three main varieties of World Englishes; ENL, ESL, and EFL, in terms of learner writing. The comparisons are made on five dimensions of 88 multi-dimensional analysis and three new dimensions of variability specific to learner argumentative writing. Finally, statistical evidence suggests that there is significant variation between the four population groups. The findings have been discussed in the light of respective co-occurring linguistic features of each dimension, with reference to previous research work on Pakistani learner writing.