SOCIOECONOMIC FACTORS AND LINGUISTIC RISKS IN ONLINE ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING: A PAKISTANI PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the highly important underrepresented concern of the socioeconomic factors contributing to linguistic threats in online English language learning (OEL) in the Pakistani context, where English is a secondary language and a symbol of socioeconomic mobility. The digital divide and its effect on the process of language acquisitions is also the research problem, which leads to two major goals, as follows: determining how socioeconomic differences contribute to the access to OELL resources, and to estimate the linguistic risks of the lack of equal digital access. Using a quantitative research methodology, a survey (n=400 Pakistani learners) of participants of SES (high and low) and geographic area (18-35) with proficiency tests showed that low SES participants (mean access = 3.08, mean risks = 3.07) identified a significantly lower access (mean = 3.08) and a significantly greater risk (mean = 3.07), such as code-switching, cultural incompatibilities, etc., than their high SES counterparts (mean access = 4. These discoveries emphasize the new nexus of socioeconomic Indi tinctures and linguistic issues in Pakistan, in which rural and low-income students pose exposed to an increased risk, due to a lack of connectivity and culturally inaccurate contents, documented in the current literature on digital inequities (Khan and Khan, 2022; Sharma and Grant, 2024). The implications lead to active policy proposals, including subsidized internet and localized AI tools, as well as to theoretical contributions to the sociolinguistic risk models reconfigured including the online settings, where inclusive online-oriented strategies towards digital education offer a significant benefit in the case of developing countries. According to this study, a unique contribution to the global OELL discourse is the power of Pakistan to inter onto a socioeconomic and linguistic level in favor of making equitable changes to education.