• Zara Obaid

  Author

• Muhammad Asim Mahmood

  Author

This study explores the style of self and other-translators through a pragmatic analysis of speech
acts employed in narrative representation of speech acts (NRSA). As stylistic analysis is limited
to the structures of language and does not take into account contextual meaning (Ramtirthe,
2017); therefore, much is lost in terms of what the author intends actually. For example, the
stylistic analysis of the use of NRSA in a text reveals that the author chooses to present the even
entirely from his own perspective (Leech & Short, 1981), but how the author intends to portray
the event or characters through NRSA can only be determined through a pragmatic analysis. The
present study; therefore, analyses NRSA through a pragma-stylistic analysis in order to
thoroughly understand the style of self and other-translators. It analyses three categories of texts
i.e. self-translators, other-translators and Pakistani writers category. Lists of NRSA are
generated for each speech act type based on Searle’s (1969) illocutionary acts. Antconc 3.4.4 is
used as a tool to generate lists which are then tagged manually. The findings show that selftranslators,
as compared to other-translators, are closer in their style to the benchmarked
Pakistani writers. The style of self-translators, through the use of speech acts, is more
authoritative in nature and also presents Pakistani culture in a good light. Pakistani writers;
however, try to create a balance by portraying characters as sometimes authoritative and
sometimes polite. Also, unlike self-translators, it presents Pakistani culture from an orthodoxical
perspective. Other-translators, however, have no distinct style. The results are significant for
future corpus-based pragma-stylistic studies.

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