Defying the Global: The Cultural Connotations of "Islam" in Malaysia
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Abstract
The cultural connotations of the word "Islam" is analysed in this study using a corpus-based semantic prosody analysis of Malaysian newspaper reports in English and Malay. Approximately 1.6 million words of Malaysian newspaper reports published between year 2014 and 2015 were used to develop two comparable sub-corpora of English and Malay data. The downward collocations (words with semantic content, i.e. nouns, verbs and adjectives) of the word "Islam" in the two sub-corpora formed the data for analysis and Partington's (2004) categorisation of semantic prosodies, i.e. positive, negative or neutral was employed in determining its prosody. The collocational patterns of "Islam" that emerged in the corpus of study suggest that the word has mostly positive and neutral prosodies in Malaysian newspapers. The cultural connotations of "Islam" that emerged from the analysis of the Malay corpus reflect the familiarity of Islam and its inherent link with the Malay language and culture, evident from the use and naturalisation of Arabic words pertaining to Islam in the Malay language. In the English corpus, the cultural connotations of "Islam" suggest its institutionalisation in the country's education system, banking system and financial establishments. These cultural connotations are in contrast with the generally negative representation of Islam in the Western and global discourse.
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