The English Language in Pakistan: A brief overview of its history and linguistics Ahmar Mahboob 1 East Carolina University Greenville, N.C., USA Introduction This paper presents an overview of Pakistani English. Pakistani English is one of the lesser studied varieties of English. A quick overview of research on Pakistani English shows that the largest body of research on Pakistani English studies its historical and political status. The next most commonly studied aspect of Pakistani English is its lexis. Some studies on lexis also discuss creative processes in Pakistani English morphology. There are few studies of Pakistani English syntax; and even fewer of phonology, discourse and pragmatics. Table 1 below lists key research done on Pakistani English, its year of publication, and its focus. In addition to a dearth of work on Pakistani English, existing studies of Pakistani English study features of Pakistani English vis-à-vis British (and/or American) English, rather than investigating the grammar of Pakistani English in itself. For example, Talaat’s (1993) study of lexical variation in Pakistani English looks at semantic shift in certain lexical items as a shift from their original ‘Standard British English’ usage to an Urduized meaning. Similarly, Baumgardner’s (1993; first published 1987) discussion of Pakistani English 1 I would like to thank my wife, Nadra Huma Ahmar, for her help in the phonological analysis of the data. Submitted version Mahboob, A. (2003). The English language in Pakistan: A brief overview of its history and linguistics. Pakistan Journal of Language, 4(1).