Discourse Markers in Pakistani English Public Discourse: Situating a South Asian New English within the World and Asian Englishes Paradigm

Abstract

While World Englishes scholarship has studied lexical, phonological, and grammatical nativization in Outer Circle varieties, register-level pragmatic patterns (particularly in Pakistani English) remains comparatively under-studied within the broader Asian Englishes. This study, therefore, presents a corpus-based comparison of discourse markers across Pakistani English newspaper editorials and National/Provincial Assembly parliamentary debates as a contribution to the sociolinguistics of Asian Englishes by focusing how Pakistani English register-based discourse-marker system compares with discourse marker nativization used for Indian, Sri Lankan, Bangladeshi, Nepali, Philippine, and Singaporean English. Using AntConc-based frequency, keyness (log-likelihood), chi-square, and one-way ANOVA testing, the analysis shows systematic register variations. Editorials favour additive, adversative, and sequential connectives that construct written argumentation, while parliamentary debates favour interactional, procedural, and stance markers (well, you know, certainly) that manage real-time institutional persuasion. Positioned against recent corpus-based research on South and Southeast Asian Englishes, Pakistani English emerges on an intermediate position on Schneider's Dynamic Model, more structurally nativized at the register level than Bangladeshi or Nepali English, yet less endonormatively stabilized in its discourse marking system than Indian, Philippine, or Singapore English. The findings extend register theory to a New English context and carry implications for English-medium instruction, media literacy, and comparative pedagogy in World Englishes.