THE SOCIOLINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF PAKISTANI NETSPEAK: NETSPEAK OF GENERATION Y AND GENERATION Z

Abstract

The study aims at sociolinguistic analysis of the English language of the Pakistani internet users and intends to explore the style and variation of the Pakistani Netspeak on different social platforms. The researcher of this analysis uses descriptive approach with mixed methods i.e. qualitative and quantitative and through content analysis explained and interpreted the sociolinguistic variables such as age, gender, and social class influencing the language features of Pakistani Netspeak. The population of the study is generation Z users and generation Y internet users of varied age bracket, gender and social class. The sample of the study is collected in the form of screenshots and snapshots of A Pakistani Netspeak. For the data interpretation, the study was anchored in William Labov's Variationist sociolinguistics and John J. Gumpers's interactional sociolinguistics. The analysis of the data shows how different sociolinguistic of words variables influence the language usage and choice on the social media platform. The data interpretation also shows how the language has changed over time in the era of digitization and has become a linguistic subculture of its own kind with altered spellings, neologism, acronyms, initials, slang, code-switching and code mixing, substandard grammar, onomatopoeic expressions, and misuse of punctuation marks.