UrduRelig: Design and Analysis of a Five-Million-Word Corpus for Urdu Religious Discourse Research and Computational Studies
Keywords:
Urdu corpus, religious discourse, corpus linguistics, UrduRelig, computational linguistics, Islamic discourse, code-switching, corpus design.Abstract
This study presents the design, construction, and initial analysis of UrduRelig, a specialized corpus developed to facilitate the systematic study of religious discourse in Urdu. Comprising approximately five million words, the corpus brings together a diverse range of Urdu-medium religious texts and represents one of the most comprehensive resources currently available for corpus-based research on Urdu religious language. Drawing on established principles of corpus design (McEnery & Wilson, 2001; Wynne, 2005), Urdu computational linguistics (Hussain, 2008), and Islamic discourse analysis (Mir, 2000), the study outlines the theoretical rationale, sampling procedures, data collection methods, and annotation framework employed in corpus construction. The corpus is organized into four major registers: Friday sermon transcripts (khutbaat), religious newspaper columns (maqaalaat), Islamic educational materials (darsi mawaadd), and online religious discussion forums (online munaazirah). To enhance its research utility, the corpus incorporates multiple layers of annotation, including morphological tagging, Urdu–Roman transliteration alignment, and identification of Arabic-origin loanwords. These annotations enable both linguistic and computational analyses across diverse dimensions of religious discourse. Preliminary corpus analyses reveal distinct lexical and stylistic profiles across registers. Friday sermons and educational materials demonstrate high concentrations of Arabic-derived religious terminology, while online discussion forums exhibit greater lexical variation and higher rates of code-switching. The findings further indicate that code-switching between Urdu and Arabic serves primarily religious and doctrinal functions, whereas English insertions are more common in discussions of contemporary social and technological issues. The study highlights the pervasive influence of Arabic-origin vocabulary across all registers and documents significant variation in discourse practices among different religious communication contexts. By making UrduRelig openly accessible, the project provides an important resource for future research in corpus linguistics, religious discourse analysis, Urdu language studies, and natural language processing.
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