Student Number

19253

Degree

Master of Science in Development Studies

School

School of Economics and Social Sciences (SESS)

Date of Submission

Summer 8-28-2026

Supervisor

Dr. Arslan Waheed, Assistant Professor and Program Director, Graduate Programs SSLA

Committee Member 1

Dr. Arslan Waheed, Supervisor, Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi

Committee Member 2

Dr. Filza Waseem, Examiner, Assistant Professor (Retd.), COMSATS Lahore

Keywords

Romanized Urdu, Cultural Hybridity, Postcolonial Theory, Language, Identity

Abstract

This thesis examines Romanized Urdu as a site of cultural hybridity and postcolonial negotiation among Pakistani university students. Despite its widespread daily use, Romanized Urdu has remained largely unexamined from a qualitative, postcolonial theoretical perspective, with existing scholarship treating it primarily as a computational or descriptive linguistic object. Drawing on Homi K. Bhabha’s postcolonial theory, this study explores how thirty-four students across five universities in Karachi experience, narrate, and make meaning of their own Romanized Urdu practice. Using semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis, a thorough understanding of the script arises, as it functions as a Third Space between insufficient linguistic practices and the persistence of class hierarchy through informally reproduced orthographic markers. The study of Romanized Urdu is best understood not as a corruption of Urdu, a failure of English-medium education, or a threat to cultural heritage, but as a symptom of, and a response to, Pakistan’s unresolved postcolonial condition. It is a genuine democratic communicative space that has nonetheless been shaped by the very hierarches it appears to dissolve.

Submission Type

Thesis

Document Type

Restricted Access

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