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Images have the potential to both alienate and unite. Due to their ideological power, images can both create and clear misconceptions. To analyze the semiotic variation in the portrayal of women in contemporary art in relation to feminine identities and ideological representations, the study analyzes the choice of ideational signs in the contemporary Chinese and Pakistani paintings on the basis of the social semiotic approach of the grammar of visual design suggested by Kress and van Leeuwen. Considering diversity of themes and portrayal of women, 30 Pakistani and 30 Chinese paintings, painted by 17 Chinese and 17 Pakistani male and female painters were selected through an information-rich sampling technique. Results suggest that loneliness, waiting, leisure, and love for nature are the common themes related to Chinese and Pakistani women which the painters have creatively modeled. The images vary in the sense that Chinese women have been represented in constructive gender roles, such as working women, ballerinas, sports women, and hardworking farmers, etc., while Pakistani women have been represented in terms of resistance, oppression, victimhood, religiosity, and protection. The study has implications for gender studies, multimodal representations, and the way we comprehend, describe, and construct the interconnected yet fragmented fabric of our world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study highlights the creative use of deviation as a stylistic device for presenting linguistic innovations in the novel Duty Free (originally published in 2011) written in English by a Pakistani writer Moni Mohsin. It has been explored how and to what extent the eight types of deviation, such as lexical, grammatical, semantic, phonological, graphological, dialectal, deviation of register, and deviation of historical period suggested by Geoffrey N. Leech have been employed by Moni Mohsin in her novel. By identifying how morphological, compound, and idiomatic neologisms have been created, words from native languages have been borrowed, and innovative similes, metaphors, and tautologies rooted in Pakistani culture have been employed, the study helps in understanding the extent to which novel uses of English language create unique stylistic effects, add to the richness and vitality of English, and cause variation simultaneously. Deviation of historical period and certain subcategories of phonological deviation have not been found. The study has implications for Pakistani English, lexicology, stylistic foregrounding, and creative writing in English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]