LANGUAGE, IDENTITY, AND ENGLISH DIGITAL STORYTELLING PRACTICES IN SOUTH PUNJAB

Abstract

This paper evaluates how English as a medium has played out in digital storytelling practices and how it engages with the local languages in South Punjab which is a diverse linguistic and socioeconomically disadvantaged area of Pakistan. Based on poststructuralist views on language, identity, and investment, the study takes a qualitative design using the narrative inquiry, critical discourse analysis, and multimodal analysis. The sampling method used was purposive, and three locally produced digital vlogs posted on social media sites were chosen in which spoken storytelling is combined with visual representation and audio. The review indicates that English has been employed strategically and selectively as opposed to being a dominant language of narration. It is mainly a symbolic and a practical resource of digital literacy, modernity, aspiration, and a broader audience reach whereas Saraiki, Punjabi, and Urdu are the key to emotional expression, identity anchoring, and cultural representation. The results also show that code-switching between languages is strategic and structurally diffused and is a product of a complementary multilingual ecology and not a linguistic displacement. Digital storytelling by the English in South Punjab can therefore be seen as a place of negotiation of identity wherein the local and the global are developed simultaneously. The paper has added to the sociolinguistic and applied linguistic research by anticipating the fringe voices and emphasizing how marginalized groups make use of English in the digital community to facilitate power, identity, and cultural maintenance.