TEXTUAL DIMENSIONS OF KHYBER PAKHTUNKHWA ENACTED LAWS: A LEXICO-GRAMMATICAL ANALYSIS

Abstract

This study investigated multidimensional patterns of lexico-grammatical variation in a corpus of enacted laws in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa using the Multidimensional Analysis framework introduced by Biber in his work, Variation across Speech and Writing. This study explored how different categories of laws that were enacted by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa differ across textual dimensions. The research was conducted over a sample of 14 categories consisting of 70 enacted laws including university, finance, ad hoc, benefit and allowance, court, fund, health, land and property, law, loan, statutory bodies, revenue and tax, women, and repeal acts. The legal texts of these categories of enacted laws were analyzed using the multidimensional analysis framework on six dimensions of linguistic variance. The results of this study showed the differences in lexical and grammatical structures that are embedded in the province’s enacted laws. These fourteen categories were found to significantly vary from one another along all six dimensions of the 1988 model of variation and to exhibit significant variation in the use of lexico-grammatical elements such as vocabulary, word order, and sentence structure. The categories featured high features of nouns, present tense verbs, adjectives, phrasal coordination, predictive modals and demonstratives, which rendered their textual dimensions nonnarrative, persuasive, situation independent, abstract and informative, and not randomly but as the result of a number of factors, including context, goal, register and audience. This study's findings contribute crucial information on linguistic variation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's enactment discourse and offer an insight into the corpus oriented approach to the study of legal language. The findings of this study will help to improve the communication between Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's linguists and legal professionals. It will enable them to communicate and understand the usage of legal register (legislated laws). Future researchers may decide to focus on one or more dimensions depending on their requirements and areas of interest.

Keywords: Textual Dimension, Lexico-grammar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's enacted laws, multidimensional analysis.

Introduction