Words that Bind, Voices that Break: A Corpus-Driven Critical Discourse Analysis of Gendered Collocations and Marginalization in Pakistani Anglophone Literature

Abstract

This study examines the evolution of gendered identity and power relations in Pakistani Anglophone literature. The Pakistani Anglophone Literature Corpus (PALC), a 260,000-word digital corpus, underpins Kamila Shamsie, Mohammed Hanif, and Daniyal Mueenuddin's Home Fire (2017), Red Birds (2018), and This Is Where the Serpent Lives (2026). The study combines quantitative corpus analysis methods like frequency, keyness, and collocation (in AntConc v4.2.1 and Sketch Engine) with qualitative transitivity and social actor representation studies. There is a substantial tilt toward male pronouns in the corpus (1.75:1) and notably in Mueenuddin's rural-feudal narrative (2.72:1). Collocation and keyness studies show that female social actors interact synecdochically with caution (adjectival collocates), compliance (verbal collocates), domestic confinement, and physical fragmentation. Executive capacitative, legal-institutional authority, and active material processes define masculine social players. However, a qualitative transitivity study in subaltern agency and linguistic resistance shows female characters reclaiming their voice to challenge patriarchy, imperialism, and class. This work combines digital humanities and post-colonial feminist studies by using computer-aided language techniques to highlight current South Asian fiction's profound ideological systems.