Defying the Global: The Cultural Connotations of "Islam" in Malaysia
Main Article Content
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.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
References
Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid and Muhamad Takiyuddin Ismail. 2014. Islamist conservatism and the demise of Islam Hadhari Malaysia. Islam and ChristianMuslim relation 25(2): 159–180, https://doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2014.880549.
Aini Maznina A. Manaf and Nerawi Sedu. 2015. Framing Islam-related issues during GE13: An analysis of Malaysian mainstream newspapers. Intellectual Discourse 23(1): 29–52.
Anthony, L. 2015. AntConc 3.4.3m [Computer software]. Waseda, Japan: Waseda University.
Asmah Haji Omar. 1992. The linguistic scenery in Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa and Pustaka.
Baker, P. 2012. Acceptable bias? Using corpus linguistics methods with critical discourse analysis. Critical Discourse Studies 9(3): 247–256, https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2012.688297.
_______2010. Representations of Islam in British broadsheet and tabloid newspapers 1999–2005. Journal of Language and Politics 9(2): 310–338, https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.9.2.07bak.
Baker, P., Gabrielatos, C. and McEnery, T. 2012. Sketching Muslims: A corpus driven analysis of representations around the word "Muslim" in the British press 1998– 2009. Applied Linguistics 34(3): 255–278, https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/ams048.
Begagi?, M. 2013. Semantic preference and semantic prosody of the collocation make sense. Jezikoslivlje 14(2–3): 403–416.
d'Haenens, L. and Bink, S. 2006. Islam in the Dutch press: With special attention to the Algemeen Dagblad. Media, Culture and Society 29(1):135–149, https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443706072002.
Dahinden, U., Koch, C., Wyss, V. and Keel, G. 2011. Representation of Islam and Christianity in the Swiss Media. Journal of Empirical Theology 24: 197–208, https://doi.org/10.1163/157092511X603983.
Gabrielatos, C. and Baker, P. 2008. Fleeing, sneaking, flooding: A corpus analysis of discursive constructions of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press, 1996– 2005. Journal of English Linguistics 36(1): 5–38, https://doi.org/10.1177/0075424207311247.
Hajar Abdul Rahim. 2005. Impak konotasi budaya terhadap leksis: satu kajian semantik berasaskan korpus ke atas perkataan "perempuan" dan "wanita" (The impact of cultural connotations on lexis: A corpus-based semantic analysis of perempuan and wanita). Jurnal Bahasa 5(1): 83–111.
Hajar Abdul Rahim and Shakila Abdul Manan. 2014. Postcolonial Malaysian English: Realities and prospects. In English in Malaysia: Postcolonial and beyond, eds. Hajar Abdul Rahim and Shakila Abdul Manan, 9–33. Amsterdam: Peter Lang.
Hishamudin Isam and Norsimah Mat Awal. 2012. Nilai setia dari perspektif prosodi semantik: Analisis berbantu data korpus. GEMA Online Journal of Language Studies 12(2): 359–374.
Hunston, S. 2007. Semantic prosody revisited. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 12(2): 249–268, https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.12.2.09hun.
Jackson, L. 2010. Images of Islam in US media and their educational implications. Educational Studies 46(1): 3–24, https://doi.org/10.1080/00131940903480217.
Johnson, T. M., Zurlo, G. A., Hickman, A. W. and Crossing, P. F. 2015. Christianity 2015: Religious diversity and personal contact. International Bulletin of Missionary Research 39(1): 28–29.
Kabir, N. 2007. Representation of Islam and Muslims in the Australian media, 2001– 2005. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 26(3): 313–328, https://doi.org/10.1080/13602000601141281.
Kisaichi, M. 2006. The Burhami order and Islamic resurgence in modern Egypt. In Popular movements and democratization in the Islamic world, ed. Kisaichi, M., 57–77. London: Routledge.
Kubota, R. 2013. "Language is only a tool": Japanese expatriates working in China and implications for language teaching. Multilingual Education 3(4): 1–20, https://doi.org/10.1186/2191-5059-3-4.
Laird, L. D., de Marrais, J. and Barnes, L. L. 2007. Portraying Islam and Muslims in MEDLINE: A content analysis. Social Science and Medicine 65: 2425–2439, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2007.07.029.
Louw, B. 2000. A contextual prosodic theory: Bringing semantic prosodies to life. In Words in context: A tribute to John Sinclair on his retirement, eds. Heffer, C. and Sauntson, H., 48–94. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
_______1993. Irony in the text or insincerity in the writer? The diagnostic potential of semantic prosodies. In Text and technology: In honour of John Sinclair, eds. Baker, M., Francis, G. and Tognini-Bonelli, E., 157–176. Amsterdam /Philadelphia: John Benjamins, https://doi.org/10.1075/z.64.11lou.
Mahboob, A. 2009. English as an Islamic language: A case study of Pakistani English. World Englishes 28(2): 175–189, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-971X.2009.01583.x.
Malcolm, D., Bairner, A. and Curry, G. 2010. "Woolmergate": Cricket and the representation of Islam and Muslims in the British Press. Journal of Sports and Social Issues 34(2): 215–235, https://doi.org/10.1177/0193723510367768.
Martin, P. and Phelan, S. 2002. Representing Islam in the wake of September 11: A comparison of US television and CNN Online message board discourses. Prometheus 20(3): 263–269, https://doi.org/10.1080/08109020210141371.
Maznah Mohamad. 2011. Like a shady tree swept by the windstorm: Malays in dissent. In Melayu: The politics, poetics and paradoxes of Malayness, eds. Maznah Mohamad and Syed Muhd Khairudin Aljuneid, 34–67. Singapore: NUS Press.
McEnery, T. and Hardie, A. (2012) Corpus linguistics: Method, theory and practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McKay, S. L. 2013. Globalization, localization and language attitudes: The case of "foreign workers" in Singapore. Multilingual Education 3(3): 1–12, https://doi.org/10.1186/2191-5059-3-3.
Miichi, K. 2006. Penetration of "moderate" Islamism in contemporary Indonesia. In Popular movements and democratization in the Islamic world, ed. Kisaichi, M., 126–142. London: Routledge.
Mohd Azizuddin Mohd Sani, Norhafezah Yusof, Azahar Kassim and Rusdi Omar. 2009. Malaysia in transition: A comparative analysis of Asian values, Islam Hadhari and 1Malaysia. Journal of Politics and Law 2(3): 110–118.
Neo, J. L. 2014. What's in a name? Malaysia's "Allah" controversy and the judicial intertwining of Islam with ethnic identity. I-CON 12(3): 751–768, https://doi.org/10.1093/icon/mou050.
Norshahril Saat. 2011. Islamising Malayness: Ulama discourse and authority in contemporary Malaysia. Contemporary Islam 6: 135–153, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11562-011-0172-9.
Partington, A. 2004. "Utterly content in each other's company": Semantic prosody and semantic preference. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 9(1): 131–156, https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.9.1.07par.
Payne, R. J. and Nassar, J. R. 2003. Politics and culture in the developing world. New York: Pearson Education Inc. Rundell,
M. 2000. Slumped in front of the telly. In Humanising language teaching 1. Retrieved from http://www.hltmag.co.uk/jan00/idea.htm.
Sankar, L. V. 2013. Malaysia editorials on the Allah issue: A critical discourse study. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies 10(1): 31–61, https://doi.org/10.1080/15427587.2013.753842.
Sapir, E. 1921. Language: An introduction to the study of speech. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co.
Sharifian, F. 2013. Globalisation and developing metacultural competence in learning English as an international language. Multilingual Education 3(7): 1–11, https://doi.org/10.1186/2191-5059-3-7.
_______2009. Cultural conceptualizations in English as an international language. In English as an international language: Perspectives and pedagogical issues, ed. Sharifian, F., 242–253. Bristol, United Kingdom: Multilingual Matters.
Sinclair, J. 1998. The lexical item. In Contrastive lexical semantics, ed. Weigand, E., 1– 24. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.171.02sin.
_______1987. Looking up. London: Collins COBUILD. Sinclair, J. M. 1991. Corpus, concordance and collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Stubbs, M. 2009. The search for units of meaning: Sinclair on empirical semantics. Applied Linguistics 30(1): 115–137, https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amn052.
_______1996. Text and corpus linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell.
_______1995a. Collocations and cultural connotations of common words. Linguistics and Education 7: 379–390, https://doi.org/10.1016/0898-5898(95)90011-X
_______1995b. Collocations and semantic profiles: On the cause of the trouble with quantitative studies. Functions of Languages 2(1): 23–55, https://doi.org/10.1075/fol.2.1.03stu.
Xiao, R. and McEnery, T. 2006. Collocation, semantic prosody and near synonymy: A cross-linguistic perspective. Applied Linguistics 27(1): 103–129, https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/ami045.
Yegar, M. 1979. Islam and Islamic institutions in British Malaya: Policies and implements. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press.