Conceptualisation of Lahore in Akhtar’s Lahore, I Am Coming (2017): a corpus stylistic analysis

Urban literature deals with the conceptualisation of a city as characterised in a literary work. In these writings, the city is contested as a social and conceptual challenge. The current study examined the conceptualisation of the city of Lahore in Akhtar’s poetic collection Lahore, I Am Coming fro...

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Main Authors: Umer, Hajra, Zahra, Tehseen
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 2023
Online Access:http://journalarticle.ukm.my/23196/
http://journalarticle.ukm.my/23196/1/TD%203.pdf
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author Umer, Hajra
Zahra, Tehseen
author_facet Umer, Hajra
Zahra, Tehseen
author_sort Umer, Hajra
building UKM Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description Urban literature deals with the conceptualisation of a city as characterised in a literary work. In these writings, the city is contested as a social and conceptual challenge. The current study examined the conceptualisation of the city of Lahore in Akhtar’s poetic collection Lahore, I Am Coming from the perspective of urban imaginaries utilising a corpus stylistic approach. For this purpose, theorisations related to urban imaginaries based on Cinar and Bender’s concept of the collective imagination of a city and Shweta Sur’s notion of heterotopic urban spaces were utilised as the theoretical framework. Moreover, the current analysis utilised the corpus techniques of keyword-in-context (KWIC) and concordance analysis to analyse the occurrence of the word Lahore in the selected corpus. This was done in an attempt to trace the conceptualisation of Lahore in the selected text. The findings showed that the collective imagination of Lahore can be mapped around four different kinds of sub-themes i.e. culture, history, the city vibe, and heterotopias. Furthermore, the concordance analysis of KWIC showed that heterotopic sites within Lahore are connected with the urban ecosystem shedding light on environmental degradation and ecological imbalance. The study is particularly useful in highlighting the contemporary Pakistani urban settlements and their portrayal in Pakistani literature. Furthermore, it has provided a new dimension to the fields of urban ecology and ecocriticism by reflecting on ecological imbalance and environmental hazards which are very much connected with the urban landscape of Lahore.
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spelling oai:generic.eprints.org:231962024-03-14T07:54:43Z http://journalarticle.ukm.my/23196/ Conceptualisation of Lahore in Akhtar’s Lahore, I Am Coming (2017): a corpus stylistic analysis Umer, Hajra Zahra, Tehseen Urban literature deals with the conceptualisation of a city as characterised in a literary work. In these writings, the city is contested as a social and conceptual challenge. The current study examined the conceptualisation of the city of Lahore in Akhtar’s poetic collection Lahore, I Am Coming from the perspective of urban imaginaries utilising a corpus stylistic approach. For this purpose, theorisations related to urban imaginaries based on Cinar and Bender’s concept of the collective imagination of a city and Shweta Sur’s notion of heterotopic urban spaces were utilised as the theoretical framework. Moreover, the current analysis utilised the corpus techniques of keyword-in-context (KWIC) and concordance analysis to analyse the occurrence of the word Lahore in the selected corpus. This was done in an attempt to trace the conceptualisation of Lahore in the selected text. The findings showed that the collective imagination of Lahore can be mapped around four different kinds of sub-themes i.e. culture, history, the city vibe, and heterotopias. Furthermore, the concordance analysis of KWIC showed that heterotopic sites within Lahore are connected with the urban ecosystem shedding light on environmental degradation and ecological imbalance. The study is particularly useful in highlighting the contemporary Pakistani urban settlements and their portrayal in Pakistani literature. Furthermore, it has provided a new dimension to the fields of urban ecology and ecocriticism by reflecting on ecological imbalance and environmental hazards which are very much connected with the urban landscape of Lahore. Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 2023-12 Article PeerReviewed application/pdf en http://journalarticle.ukm.my/23196/1/TD%203.pdf Umer, Hajra and Zahra, Tehseen (2023) Conceptualisation of Lahore in Akhtar’s Lahore, I Am Coming (2017): a corpus stylistic analysis. 3L; Language,Linguistics and Literature,The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies., 29 (4). pp. 29-45. ISSN 0128-5157 https://ejournal.ukm.my/3l/issue/view/1636
spellingShingle Umer, Hajra
Zahra, Tehseen
Conceptualisation of Lahore in Akhtar’s Lahore, I Am Coming (2017): a corpus stylistic analysis
title Conceptualisation of Lahore in Akhtar’s Lahore, I Am Coming (2017): a corpus stylistic analysis
title_full Conceptualisation of Lahore in Akhtar’s Lahore, I Am Coming (2017): a corpus stylistic analysis
title_fullStr Conceptualisation of Lahore in Akhtar’s Lahore, I Am Coming (2017): a corpus stylistic analysis
title_full_unstemmed Conceptualisation of Lahore in Akhtar’s Lahore, I Am Coming (2017): a corpus stylistic analysis
title_short Conceptualisation of Lahore in Akhtar’s Lahore, I Am Coming (2017): a corpus stylistic analysis
title_sort conceptualisation of lahore in akhtar’s lahore, i am coming (2017): a corpus stylistic analysis
url http://journalarticle.ukm.my/23196/
http://journalarticle.ukm.my/23196/
http://journalarticle.ukm.my/23196/1/TD%203.pdf