Intergenerational Pragmatic Change in Pakistani Indigenous Languages: A Theoretical Socio-pragmatic Analysis

Abstract

Pragmatic change, which has been defined as change in socially controlled language use, is a key and understudied aspect of change in linguistic development in multilingual societies. Historically, intricate sets of honorification, indirectness, address based on kinship, hierarchical politeness have been systematized in indigenous languages in Pakistan, including Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto, Balochi, Saraiki, Hindko, and Brahui. These practical forms are symptomatic of the imbedded cultural principles of respect, collectivism, hierarchical age-based relations, and obligation of relatedness. But the modern Pakistan is experiencing a fast socio-cultural change due to urbanization, globalization, English-based education, free movement of labor, and online communication tools. It seems that these changes are associated with the intergenerational differences in communicative behavior, which are observed. The research provides a detailed socio-pragmatic investigation of intergenerational pragmatic shift in Pakistani native languages. The paper is based on the conceptualization of pragmatic change as reconfiguration as opposed to erosion in drawing on the politeness theory by Brown and Levinson (1987), politeness model by Leech (1983, 2014), rapport management model by Spencer-Oatey (2008), and variationist sociolinguistic theory (Labov, 1994; Tagliamonte, 2012). It posits that younger generations are evidenced to show domain-specific simplification of honorific resources, more solidarity-driven politeness, pragmatical hybridization using Urdu and English resources, and digitally mediated compression of politeness resources. Placing pragmatic transformation in the context of the overarching socio-cultural processes, the current research leads to the new socio-pragmatic scholarship in South Asian countries and to the need to document pragmatic systems as an aspect of preserving indigenous languages.