Identifying Syntactic Patterns in Pakistani English Social Media Posts

Abstract

This study discusses the syntactic patterns of Pakistani English posts in social media and with focus and especially on Facebook posts by Pakistani university students. The purpose of the study is to name and discuss the most frequent grammatical mistakes in informal online communication. A sample of 30 Facebook posts was identified and analyzed on five significant syntactic properties namely use of articles, verb forms, parts of speech, capitalization and punctuation. The results indicate that punctuation errors were the most common then the article and capitalization mistakes, and errors of verb form and parts of speech were also frequent. These results show that even educated users are likely to disregard grammatical correctness in social media which indicates the power of informal first language interference and communication habits. This research contains the conclusion that Facebook promotes a casual style in writing in which there is breaking of grammatical rules. The study adds to the field of knowledge regarding the usage of English online in Pakistan and emphasizes the necessity of spreading grammar consciousness and syntactic accuracy even in informal writing on the Internet. The results can help linguists, educators and learners to enhance writing standards in academic and social mediums.