Anglicism and Linguistic Identity: Insights from Pashtun Undergraduates in the Department of English, University of Malakand

Abstract

This paper aimed to investigate the impact of Anglicism on the Pashto speakers in the department of English, University of Malakand. The study is primarily focused on the emergence of English as a dominant language and its usage by the speakers of Pashto language in daily communication. The impact of Anglicism can be seen in the form of vocabulary, pronunciation and phrases of the native speakers of Pashto language. For the current study, the researcher selected 30 students through convenience sampling procedure where the researcher has easy accessibility to the respondents of the study. The researcher used mixed-methods research design by employing interview and observation as data collection tools. Furthermore, the researcher visited the University and collected data from the respondents. The collected data were analysed through Word-Cloud software for statistical analysis while interpreted the responses of the participants for qualitative analysis. The findings of the study revealed that the major impact of Anglicism existed in the form of code-switching between the two languages as the students used short phrases for better understanding. The students used English words and short phrases to fill the lexical gap in their conversation, cultural reason, positive attitude to English and their habit of using these expressions. Thus, the study proved that Anglicism has become an unavoidable part of the conversation of educated Pashto speakers.