Gender Based Linguistic Variation in Pakistani IELTS Argumentative Essays: A Multidimensional Analysis

Abstract

The present study hopes to explore the linguistic dimensions (proposed by Biber, 1988) in argumentative essays written by IELTS test takers in Pakistan. Extensive research has been carried out on learner writing in Pakistan. In the previous studies, among other research methodologies (Toulmin, 1958; Swales, 1993; Hyland, 1990; Nini, 2009), Biber’s multidimensional approach has also been used. However, the focus of most of these studies has been either world languages or contrastive rhetoric. This research is quantitative in nature. A corpus of IELTS writing component task 2 has been developed. This corpus is a specialized learner corpus. Data has been collected by conducting mock tests at IELTS preparation centers. Essay prompt was given and the candidates had to follow the time constraints of IELTS Task 2 (40 minutes). About 500 texts each of approximately 200-word have been collected from IELTS test preparatory centers in Lahore, Pakistan. This IELTS Argumentative Essays Corpus (IAEC) is comprising upon 0.1 million words. The compiled data has been analyzed using Biber’s multidimensional tagger (1988). The gender-based difference has been studied in this paper. The mean values of dimension scores show that there is a slight difference in the nearest genre to Biber (1988) only on dimension 1. On all other dimensions the gender based linguistic difference is insignificant. While comparing the present corpus to Biber’s dimension scores, the IAE corpus shows significant results on dimension 1, 2 and 3. Biber’s closest genres to the present research are prepared speeches, broadcasts, official documents and press reportage respectively on dimensions 1 to D5. The corpus compiled for this study will be useful for further linguistic explorations of IELTS test takers data of the genre of argumentative essays particularly in Pakistani context.