Linguistics and Literature Review

Cultural Cultural Perception of Animals through Idioms: A Comparative Study of Sindhi and English IdiomsRepresentation through Animal Idioms: A Comparative Study of Sindhi and English Idioms

2026-01-12T05:36:25+00:00

Idioms are an important part of any language and they are a very prominent source of understanding the culture of a language due to their rich cultural content and character. Despite the potential role of idioms to be a great source of insight into a culture, the cross-cultural exploration of Sindhi and English language, through idioms, is an under-researched area. This research is an attempt to explore the similarities and differences regarding the perception of animals in the above-mentioned cultures through the idioms with animal imagery. For this purpose, the data was collected from three books of idioms for each language and the technique employed to collect the data was that of purposive sampling. The analysis of data was guided by the Conceptual Metaphor Theory or CMT presented by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) in their seminal work “Metaphors We Live by”. The findings of the research show that the idioms of Sindhi language demonstrate a more negative perception of animals than the idioms of English language. In addition to that, it was observed that English and Sindhi idioms have similarities as well as differences when it comes to the perception and representation of animals. Hopefully, this research will prove to be helpful in clarifying the confusions faced by the native Sindhi speakers who are actively engaged in learning English as their second language.

Ecofeminist Resistance and the Post-colonial Realities in Against the Loveless World (2020)

2026-02-23T08:50:17+00:00

More recent literature on the conflict in Palestine has focused on historical and political injustice. The structural violence, the people of Palestine have encountered from Israel’s regime, arguably a Zionist ideology has been condemned by a sizeable section of the international community. However, the literature mostly by exiled Palestinian writers carries on the flame of resistance. Historically, women are the worst victims of warfare, however, postmodernity envisages the non-human agency of nature as an equal victim of war. Therefore, ecofeminism sees women and nature as joint victims of war and violence. Susan Abulhawa is an American-Palestinian author and activist whose fictional accounts of the torture and daily violence Palestinian women face bring a fresh insight not only into Israel’s brutalization of human rights but into the impunity they enjoy having political franchises in the Western political corridors. Abulhawa’s novels Mornings in Jenin (2006), The Blue Between Sky and Water (2015), and Against the Loveless World (2020), document the horrors of Israel’s colonial project and its aftermaths for women and Nature. I argue that both women and Nature are uprooted. Therefore, the theory of ecofeminism aligns with my line of argument. Notably, ecofeminism is a sub-branch of feminism, originally coined by a French feminist Françoise d’Eaubonne who contends that patriarchal society maltreats both women and nature. The aggressor is masculine may it be a war machine or an ideology. By implication, in the fictional narratives, the victim is female deriving her resistance from nature’s resilience against hegemonic masculinity and the resultant man-made destruction of vegetative life. Therefore, Abulhawa’s novels encompass feminist resistance as a version of ecological resistance- a literary trope. In the present thesis, this survivalist behavior of mythical Mother Earth and the woman as a natural and biological nurturer in Palestine-occupied territory under Israel’s colonial gaze is investigated through the lens of Ecofeminism, a combination of Ecocriticism and Feminism.

Linguistic Perspective of Pakistani Street Vendors’ Communication: An Ethnopragmatics Approach

2026-02-23T08:26:20+00:00

Since that century, there has been an increasing interest in understanding the twists and turns of meaning-making in different languages and cultures. The purpose of this study is to determine how Pakistani street vendors use language and communication strategies to negotiate meaning and to understand the adaptation of ways of communication by street vendors toward different customers. Based on the Ethnopragmatics approach by Goddard (2006), the researcher investigates the communication of Pakistani street vendors as a sample using the observation method of research. The findings show that street vendors make communication happen by using the strategies of cultural script, semantic primes, pragmatic particles, and linguistic evidence like turn-taking, overlapping, and more. The analysis provides a deeper understanding of cross-cultural communication and sheds light on how vendors negotiate meaning and achieve their goals by conveying meaning effectively to different audiences. The research contributes to the field of Anthropological Linguistics and also offers valuable insights for future researchers, in the context of less-explored areas such as the linguistic perspective of street vendors' communication.