The Textual Tapestry of Postcolonial Identity: A Corpus-Assisted Approach to Urdu–English Code-Switching and Lexical Innovation in Modern Pakistani Fiction

Abstract

This study uses corpus-assisted postcolonial stylistic analysis of Mohsin Hamid's Urdu-English code-switching novels Moth Smoke (2000) and The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) to examine Pakistani postcolonial identity's socio-cultural creation and negotiation. This study examines the linguistic structures that underlie postcolonial resistance to Western cultural hegemony by utilizing hybridity, specifically Homi K. Bhabha's "Third Space," along with sociolinguistic models of language alternation, including Shana Poplack's typology and Carol Myers-Scotton's Markedness Model. Using a specially developed micro-corpus of the two novels, this study records the frequency, morphosyntactic classification, contextual semantics, and text occurrences of culturally laden terms like yaar, dadi, chacha, saab, lota, shalwar, kurta, jalebis, and regional toponyms. In Moth Smoke, the use of widespread intra-sentential switching and kinship honourifics indicates stratified socio-economic hierarchies in Lahore during 1998. In post-9/11 The Reluctant Fundamentalist, highly chosen, untranslated cultural nouns and food-related lexical items subvert the Western gaze tactically and ironically. The results indicate that code-switching is a well-structured, rule-governed, and intentional aesthetic technique that decentralises the SBE and renders Pakistani English a distinct and sovereign version of English. This research concludes that the bilingual narrative tapestry offers a venue for language decolonisation, where postcolonial writers can attain cultural agency and express the difficulties of a hyphenated diasporic life in a polarised world.