THE CHALLENGE OF ACCURATE INTERPRETATION OF NON-VERBAL LANGUAGE IN PAKISTAN WHILE DOING COUNTRY-WIDE RESEARCH VIA NATIONAL OR OFFICIAL LANGUAGE

Abstract

Pakistan, being a heterogeneous country, is home to people hailing from different ethnicities, subcultures and local languages. Nonverbal language acquired by a speaker parallel to the acquisition of their local language on subcultural level can continue to be used by the speaker while using their
national or official language. As a result, a researcher doing country-wide research faces a great deal of chances of misunderstanding the non-verbal cues accompanying the oral responses made in the national lingua franca, Urdu, in the official language, English or in some rare cases the mother tongue
of the respondent. The nature and extent of the matter was investigated by interviewing students coming from different parts of the country i.e. Karak, Hunza, Quetta and Gilgit, to the National University of Modern Languages (NUML), Islamabad, in the official language, English or, upon choice, in the lingua franca, Urdu. Speakers of different mother tongues from different ethnicities were selected via purpose sampling. Since they were university students, most of them agreed to give interviews in simple English or Urdu language. It surfaced that despite giving their interviews in English or in Urdu, the interviewees still used the nonverbal cues associated to their mother tongues and their sub-cultures; thereby, posing difficulty in interpreting their nonverbal behavior correctly. The findings were that the apparent smile of the people of Hunza was not because they enjoyed a bad comment or question; the high tone and roughness of people from Karak should not be interpreted as signs of argumentation or rudeness. Unlike many other cultures of the country the people from Gilgit were not prone to make hand gesture while speaking and they disliked being touché physically during conversation. Much rhythmical variation in the speech of the Pashto speakers from Quetta should not be taken as a dramatic and artificial style. It was recommended that anyone doing research on
national level should spend some time with their interviewees to be aware of the peculiar nonverbal behaviour associated to their sub-cultures or should make a list of their specific non-verbal cues and meanings to interpret their communication correctly.