Analyzing Artificial Intelligence, Technological Mediation, and Non-Human Cognition in Contemporary Pakistani English Fiction: A Cognitive Stylistic Study of Narrative Voice in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West and Bina Shah’s Before She Sleeps

Abstract

This research explores how narrative voice in modern Pakistani English literature linguistically constructs artificial intelligence, technological mediation, and non-human cognition. The study, which has its roots in cognitive stylistics, attempts to examine how technologically influenced modalities of perception, agency, and consciousness are modelled by narrative language. The research is set against the backdrop of increased interest in post human theory and artificial intelligence throughout the world, as well as a dearth of linguistic analysis of Pakistani English literary works that tackle these subjects. The study uses cognitive stylistic analysis as its main approach and adopts a qualitative interpretivist research paradigm. The information consists of carefully chosen passages from Bina Shah's Before She Sleeps (2018) and Mohsin Hamid's Exit West (2017). Using a purposive sample strategy, data was gathered by closely reading and methodically coding sections that focused on narrative voice, technology mediation, and changed cognition. The results show that both books allow readers to cognitively replicate technologically mediated consciousness by using language techniques including abstraction, deictic instability, constrained focalization, and procedural modality to build non-human cognition. The research comes to the conclusion that rather than functioning as explicit machine entities, artificial intelligence in Pakistani English literature functions as a distributed cognitive system. To further investigate cognitive engagement with AI-themed tales, it is advised that future studies broaden the corpus and use corpus-assisted and reader-response methodologies.