Of ‘khar bachaya’ and ‘takra jenai’: Lexical Pashtoization in I am Malala and The Shadow of the Crescent Moon

Abstract

The fact that the English language underwent adaptations at various
linguistic levels in different parts of the world had been established, and
reflected in the bulk of academic works that term it variously as
Postcolonial Englishes/englishes, Global English(es), World English(es), the
New Englishes, Chinese Englishes, South Asian Englishes, Indian English,
Pakistani English, and so on. In the context of Pakistan, the process of
indigenization is often termed as “Pakistanization” of English
(Baumgardner, 1993; Khan, 2012; Sheeraz, 2013). The works with
linguistically narrowed focus on the influence of Urdu as a contact
language term this process as “Urduization of English” (Baumgardner et al.,
1993; Mahmood & Shah, 2011; Bilal et al., 2012). In order to understand
the process of Pakistanization of English, and to map the form and function
of Pakistani English, it is imperative to study the influences of other
Pakistani languages as well. In this paper, studying the case of two works,
namely, I am Malala (2013) by Malala Yousafzai and Christina Lamb, and
The Shadow of the Crescent Moon (2013) by Fatima Bhutto, we explore the
nature and extent of Pashtoization of English at lexical level. The study
draws upon the conceptual frameworks developed in the fields of Linguistic
Criticism and Postcolonial Theory, and the structural frameworks developed
in the field of World Englishes, and highlights the semantic and cultural
contexts which make this indigenization possible and in some cases
necessary.