A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF FINITE ADVERBIAL CLAUSES BY MALE AND FEMALE IN PAKISTANI AND AMERICAN TV TALK SHOWS

Abstract

Language is one of the unique characteristics of human beings which has been of immense interest to man throughout history. Linguistics, as a scientific study of human language, has now expanded and evolved into a wide range of areas after a great historical advancement. The research at hand aims to identify the similarities and differences in the genderlect of Pakistanis and Americans based on the findings of the study. This is done by exploring how adverbial clauses of Pakistani males are different from those of Pakistani females using English as a second language vis-à-vis those of American males and females whose native language is English. The Comparison of both Pakistani and American genderlects (adverbial clauses) was performed by employing the corpus of the purposively selected talk shows of both America and Pakistan. The findings indicate that there are no significant and noticeable differences between Pakistani and American speakers based on genderlect. The differences in the linguistic features of cross-cultural genderlect are as: Adverbial clauses used by Pakistani male speakers were 1434 (65.8%) times while American male speakers used 1176 (67.27%) times. Adverbial clauses numbered 572 (32.7%) were used by American female speakers whereas 744 (34.1%) times were used by Pakistani female speakers. Pakistani males used 974 (47%) pauses while American males used 1112 (52%). Pakistani females used 1098 (53%) pauses while American females used 1035 (48%). Pakistani females` taken turns were 54.7% while that of the American females was 46.4%. Pakistani males` taken turns were 45.2% while American males were 53.6%. Thus, the relationship between language and gender can be inferred from how gender affects the way people in different culture use language.