The Languages of Lollywood

Rhyming and alliteration might be childish indulgences, but they are not without their appeal. So, if there is Hollywood, then why not Bollywood (with reference to Bombay), and if Bollywood, then why not Lollywood (with reference to Lahore)? Here, this term is stretched to encompass all films made anywhere in Pakistan and even, though only in passing, to those made in Dhaka before 1971, in an attempt to examine the intriguing world of language in Pakistani cinema. Strangely enough, the only scholarly book on Pakistani cinema, Mushtaq Gazdar's Pakistan Cinema 1947-1997, does not pay specific attention to the language of films. The only scholar who does mention language is Alyssa Ayres in Speaking Like a State, in which she references Maula Jatt which, she points out, changed a film industry that "had long indulged the genteel poetic Urdu aesthetic".

The elitism of Urdu

The Pakistani state does not impose any constraints in written documents on the language or languages that may be used in cinema. However, the 1979 Motion Pictures Ordinance does note that nothing in a film, including language, should be prejudicial to "decency or morality". People also assert that there is an unwritten understanding that Hindi words should not be used. Both examples mentioned above are part of what I call a language ideology, or a set of beliefs about language articulated by users as a rationalisation or justification of perceived language structure and use.