A Corpus-Based Investigation of Language Use in Pakistani University Social Media Communication

Abstract

This corpus-based study aims to explore the unique linguistic aspects of students and instructors' social media posts in the Pakistani universities. The study includes 15,000 posts from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, and WhatsApp groups of ten public and private universities in Pakistan, and uses a combination of quantitative frequency analysis and qualitative discourse analysis. The theoretical framework is the combination of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) theory, code switching and code mixing paradigm, and Digital Discourse Analysis. The results indicate that Pakistani university social media discourse is highly Urdu-English code mixed, uses Roman Urdu orthography, has lexical innovations and pragmatic hedging strategies, and has culturally embedded politeness norms that grounded in Islamic and South Asian sociolinguistic traditions. The study recognizes six major linguistic classes: (1) phonological and orthographic innovations, (2) lexical borrowing and hybridisation, (3) morphosyntactic simplification, (4) pragmatic and politeness strategies, (5) discourse markers and conversational regulators, and (6) emoji and paralinguistic features. The corpus analysis shows that the discourse of Pakistani universities is a multilingual register that is neither a local one nor a global one, but a hybrid that exists at their intersection. The results have relevance in the areas of sociolinguistics, English Language Teaching (ELT), and digital literacy pedagogy in the context of Pakistan's higher education system. This research adds to the rapidly expanding research in South Asian CMCs and helps to shape the understanding of the evolving nature of the academic digital communication of Pakistan.