LANGUAGE MAINTENANCE AND CULTURAL IDENTITY: A SOCIOLINGUISTICS INVESTIGATION OF LINGUISTICS AND CULTURAL LOSSES IN PUNJABI

Abstract

Language serves as a vessel of cultural identity, historical continuity, and traditional values and the common ideas are all communicated through the language. The downfall of the Punjabi language is not merely linguistic change but also reflects the erosion of vocabulary and broader cultural transformation. Punjabi language a rich oral tradition, poetry and traditional ideology. This easy examine the cultural important and extinct the Punjabi words and culture and explore the reasons why their extinction and highlights the contemporary effects to recover the linguistics heritage. This exploration emphasizes the persevering the importance or value to decline Punjabi words that means to maintain the culture identity and traditions of Punjabi in intergenerational continuity based on Sociolinguistics studies, cultural evolution and ongoing initiatives. The younger generation, which often perceives Punjabi as an old-fashioned or rural language, has a linguistic shift due to urban living and migration patterns. The loss of linguistic variation has also been compounded by the lack of institutional support and representation of Punjabi in print, electronic, and digital media, particularly concerning idioms, proverbs, and ritual vocabulary that once described social interaction and community practices. The research investigates such sociocultural and media-induced shifts in an attempt to establish how globalization and evolving concepts of identity influenced Punjabi language and culture’s marginalization and what that implies for Punjab’s cultural continuity in Pakistan.