LINGUISTIC HEGEMONY IN STATE INSTITUTIONS: A POSTCOLONIAL ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE POLICY IN PAKISTAN

Abstract

This study attempts to explore the issue of hegemony of English in the state structures of Pakistan, such as in the domains of education, law, and banking from a post-colonial perspective, especially focusing on the language policies of Pakistan. This research focuses on four important goals that include the sociopolitical implications of English hegemony; impacts of English on institutions; ways in which English as an institutional language contributes to the shaping of society; and hidden imperialistic/capitalistic power of English in the globalized world. This current research study will use a mixed methods design which involves three aspects. Firstly, a sector-wide survey will be conducted to gain insights from stakeholders about English’s role in institutions; secondly, a corpus-based analysis of English hegemony in official documents will be carried out at lexico-phrasal level; thirdly, semi-structured interviews will be taken to understand the experiences of professional practitioners of English as a medium of institutional communication. The results of the corpus analysis indicate the significant conformity of the education discourse with policy-related orientations in English medium due to the predominance of the regulatory and academic lexicon. The banking discourse involves intensive use of highly specialized technical and functional lexicon, reflecting such policy-related values as efficiency, standardization, and financial management. In the legal discourse, the combination of regulatory vocabulary with the official style ensures the precision of communication and adds authority to the content. Thus, the qualitative results illustrate the fact that English remains the main medium for all types of discourse under analysis in terms of formalization, policy, and legitimacy. This research comes to the conclusion that English works as the hegemonic language resource in state institutions, which ensures linguistic stratification in Pakistani society.