Conflicting Images of Muslims in Post-9 11 American Literature

Since the advent of Islam, Muslims have never ceased to be important for the West and have been variously depicted in English literature from time to time. However, after the tragic incidents of 11th September, 2001, there has been a dramatic change in the world's focus on them, both in nature and in magnitude. Both as Ummah—the formal Arabic word for the global community of Muslims —and as individuals, they have suddenly found themselves among the protagonists of English literature in general, and that produced in the North American Continent in particular. This paper aims at discussing the different images of Muslims and Islam in the English literature of North America, focusing on their nature, types, causes, consequences and the way they differ from the depiction of Muslims and Islam before the drastic disaster of nine-eleven. It also intends to contrast the literature authored by Muslim Americans about themselves with that written by non-Muslim Americans about them during the period in focus.

Translational Stylistics: A Corpus-Based Study of English Translated Urdu Fiction

The present research aims at exploring translational stylistic features of English texts translated from Urdu fiction; and tracing the stylistic similarities and differences among the English translated fiction, Native English and Pakistani English fiction. It also aims at finding textual dimensions, which shape the translated fiction in a specific way. Style in translation perspective is seen a complex phenomenon, which contributes to the development of discursive structure of a text and the emergence of specific meanings in any writing activity, as translational style gets particular textual features, which make it different from the style of native and non-native writings. This research finds this aspect of stylistic studies significant to be explored specifically in corpus perspective. A corpus of translated English fiction (TEF), Pakistani English fiction (PEF) and native English fiction (NEF) has been developed. The data are analyzed against the research questions of the study by employing Multidimensional Analysis Tagger (acronym as MAT, Version 1.3), a free tagger developed by Nini (2015) available online, that provides the same output as provided by Biber’s tagger. The study finds that several linguistic features are involved in the constitution of translational style, which present it different from the fiction written in native or nonnative English. Translational style of TEF when compared to the style of PEF and NEF, is found to be more; informational, carefully integrated, elaborated, formal, explicit, precise, coherent, has more certainty, shows more literariness, and is less; affective, generalized, intensified, conversational, ambiguous, verbal, depictive, imaginative, emphatic, situation dependent, persuasive, predictable, has general narrative exposition, carries non-abstract information, has low lexical variety. Being Informational and having explicit and non-abstract information are found as the significant textual dimensions of translational style. Furthermore, the findings also draw upon a multiple comparative analysis of TEF, PEF and NEF at five textual dimensions by using ANOVA test for exploring stylistic similarities and differences. This research will help understand the critical role of language in the construction of style and meaning, therefore it will have significance for translation studies scholars and practitioners in the field, especially in Pakistani context. This research will also help the scholars understand the intimate relationship between stylistics and translation studies in corpus perspective.