Cover not available
Article published In:
Pragmatics and Society
Vol. 8:1 (2017) ► pp.26–37

Karachi weds Lahore

The performance of ethnolinguistic identities in Pakistani TV comedy

| The University of Texas at Austin

This paper investigates the mixing of Urdu and Punjabi language elements in a comic television serial – Larka Karachi Ka Kuri Lahore Di – that aired during the month of Ramzan (Urdu for Ramadan) in 2012. The serial features exaggerated depictions of a Punjabi Lahori family and a muhajir (Urdu-speaking) Karachiite family. Of particular interest is the way marked phonological features and lexical items are deployed to highlight panjabiyat (‘Punjabi-ness’). This study explores relationships between the humorous performance of language mixing and language ideologies in Pakistan. Even in places where panjabiyat is strongly emphasized, the lexico-grammatical choices made by the characters still render the language maximally understandable to an Urdu-speaking (rather than Punjabi-speaking) audience. Using theories of ‘mixed language,’ this study seeks to address the importance and implications of these ways of performing ethnolinguistic identity.

Keywords: language ideologies, language contact, language mixing, language and media, Pakistani television, Urdu, Punjabi
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction & background
  • 2.Theoretical framework
  • 3.Language mixing in LK3LD
  • 4.Mixed languages and linguistic hegemony
  • 5.Conclusions
  • References


This article is currently available as a sample article.

Published online: 25 April 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.8.1.02kir
References
Agha, Asif
2005 “Voice, footing, enregisterment”. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15(1): 38–59. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2004 “Registers of Language”. In A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology. Alessandro Duranti (ed.), 23–45. New York and Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Ali, Kamran Asdar
2004 Pulp Fictions: Reading Pakistani Domesticity. Social Text 781: 123–145. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bakker, Peter
2003 “Mixed languages as autonomous systems.” In The Mixed Language Debate: Theoretical and Empirical Advances, Yaron Matras and Peter Bakker (eds.), 107–150. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre
1984 Distinction: a social critique of the judgment of taste. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
1991 Language and symbolic power. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hill, Jane H.
1993 “Hasta La Vista, Baby: Anglo Spanish in the American Southwest”. Critique of Anthropology 13(2): 145–176. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1998 Language, Race, and White Public Space. American Anthropologist 100(3): 680–698. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lippi-Green, Rosina
1997 English with an accent: Language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mansoor, Sabiha
1993 Punjabi, Urdu, English in Pakistan: A Sociolinguistic Study. Lahore: Vanguard.Google Scholar
Matras, Yaron
2003 “Mixed languages: Re-examining the structural prototype.” InThe Mixed Language Debate: Theoretical and Empirical Advances, Yaron Matras and Peter Bakker (eds.), 151–176. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mir, Farina
2010 The social space of language: vernacular culture in British colonial Punjab. Berkeley: University of California Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ochs, Elinor
1992 “Indexing Gender”. In Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon, Alessandro Duranti and Charles Goodwin (eds.), 335–358. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Popp, Richard K.
2006 Mass Media and the Linguistic Marketplace: Media, Language, and Distinction. Journal of Communication Inquiry 30(1): 5–20. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rahman, Tariq
1996 Language and Politics in Pakistan. Karachi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2002 Language, Ideology and Power, Language Learning Among the Muslims of Pakistan and North India. Karachi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2004 Denizens of Alien Worlds: A Study of Education, Inequality and Polarization in Pakistan. Karachi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Shackle, Christopher
1970 Punjabi in Lahore. Modern Asian Studies 4(3): 239–267. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Silverstein, Michael
1976 “Shifters, linguistic categories, and cultural description.” In Meaning in Anthropology, Keith Basso and Henry Selby (eds.), 11–55. Sante Fe, N.M.: School of American Research.Google Scholar
Vasudevan, Ravi
1995 Addressing the spectator of a ‘third world’ national cinema: the Bombay ‘social’ film of the 1940s and 1950s. Screen 36(4): 305–324. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Winford, Donald
2003 An Introduction to Contact Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Chocano, Rodrigo
2022. Outsourcing the nation? Musical collaboration, nation building and neo-liberal logics in Coke Studio Pakistan. Indian Theatre Journal 6:1 ► pp. 77 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 june 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.