Evaluating Research Support Facilities to University Students during COVID-19

This study aimed to examine the research support and availability of print resources to university students during COVID-19 in Pakistan. Along with other pandemic related issues during the lockdown, university students faced study issues as all the teaching activities were shifted to online, and they faced unavailability of print resources. A quantitative study design was opted to conduct the study. A total of 2745 university students participated in the survey. This form was sent to 5950 students through their emails and WhatsApp groups. A well-structured questionnaire was constructed and pre-tested from 30 randomly selected students. The study findings showed that COVID-19 affected the educational institutions of several countries generally and Pakistan particularly. The university libraries were closed as lockdown and social distancing was implemented as per the guidelines of the World Health Organization (WHO). University students were restricted to their homes and were not allowed to visit the library. Therefore, they faced the non-accessibility of books, periodicals, manuscripts, and lack of research support facilities. This study concluded that university libraries were closed during the COVID-19 outbreak and the students faced a deficit of research support and non-availability of print resources in Pakistan. It is recommended that the university libraries should strengthen their digital resources to facilitate students in terms of research support facilities and availability of online books, manuscripts, and periodicals to tackle the issues of university students

NEGOTIATING THE INTERPLAY OF BINARIES IN KARNAD’S THE DREAMS OF TIPU SULTAN

Karnad, a renowned Indian writer, has attempted to revisit history to present an alternative narrative in The Dreams of Tipu Sultan. He has incorporated various binaries to depict human behavior and the relation between the colonizer and the colonized. The present study aims at exploring the binary constructions represented in the text employing the Saussurean idea of binary oppositions and their interplay within the text. The data have been extracted and analysed using the technique of Textual Analysis to look at the opposites and explore the way they have been constructed as interdependent to enhance the meaning of each other. This research finds that the writer has represented binaries to construct meaning within the play. Each binary contrasts the other while together they help in enhancing and clarifying the existing tensions and conflicts

IMPACT OF COVID-19 LOCKDOWN ON BALUCHISTAN AND PUNJAB: A PSYCHOLINGUISTIC ANALYSIS

Several countries around the globe implemented tight quarantine policies, such as lockdowns in whole cities in order to avoid the fast spreading and transmission of COVID-19 (Corona Virus Disease 2019). At the start of the pandemic, lockdowns were also imposed in Pakistani Cities. The purpose of this study is to look at and study the psychological effect of COVID-19 lockdown on individuals in Pakistan. The goals of the study are achieved by (1) Sampling Facebook users (geo location = Baluchistan, Pakistan) and sampling Facebook users (geo location = Punjab, Pakistan), (2) retrieving published posts of two weeks prior and after lockdown  of all users who are in these regions (e.g., the date of lockdown in Pakistan; March 23, 2020); (3) obtaining the psycholinguistic aspects of these posts by using the ‘Language Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) dictionary’; and (4) performing Wilcoxon tests in order to study the changes and variations in the psycholinguistic features of the social media posts prior and after the lockdown in these regions i.e. Baluchistan and Punjab in Pakistan. After the lockdown in these regions, the results revealed that people concentrated greater on "home" and had greater levels of cognitive process. Meanwhile, following the lockdown, the stress level in Punjab, Pakistan reduced and focus on leisure grew. Following the lockdown, there was a greater focus on group, religion, and emotions in Baluchistan, Pakistan. The findings give policy and decision-makers up-to-date information regarding public reactions and their effects concerning psychological conditions in the COVID-19 environment, and they have ramifications for data and evidence based mental health intercessions in both provinces. &nbsp

STRUCTURAL NATIVIZATION IN PAKISTANI ENGLISH: EXPLORING PREPOSITIONAL VERB IDIOSYNCRASIES

This paper is an attempt to find out how innovative prepositional verbs (PrVs) such as discuss about, discuss on, comprise of and demand for have become so deeply rooted within the linguistic system of written Pakistani English (PE). Using a corpus-based approach, this study compares how these PrVs and their corresponding single-word verbs (SWVs) comprise, demand and discuss are used in Pakistani English newspapers. It is hypothesized that there are systematic structural differences between the PrVs and their corresponding SWVs which reveal certain aspects of structural nativization in PE