Search

The global discourse on food often pivots around the issue of food security. With the new media, the discourse of food as a signifier of a national identity is constantly renewed and contested. This constant renewal and perpetual debate about food authenticity as the nexus of national identity from the Cultural Studies perspective is both the significance and the problem that the present study acknowledges and addresses. The aim of this paper is to identify, analyze and interpret the rhetorical strategies used by the media audience to reveal their attitude towards the issue. Using convenience sampling technique, a set of discourse samples is selected from the comment sections of articles on food authenticity across the new media. The corpus is analyzed using key concepts or canons in rhetoric, which are Logos, Ethos and Pathos. In addition, three rhetorical canons, invention, arrangement and style, are also used as units of analysis. The study finds that rhetors did not use the Logos (logic and fact) as one of their strategies to persuade readers to be on their side. Instead, they appealed to ethos (character and credibility) and Pathos (emotion). This evinces the idea that the media audience writing in a comment section in the new media are not basing their writing on the need to appeal to logic and fact (Logos), or proactively, but instead they are more reactionary (personal and emotive). This finding contributes towards the understanding of the media audience’s rhetorical strategies in the new media.

Social media have gained astounding worldwide growth and popularity and have become prominent in the life of many young people today. According to various research studies in the field of online social networks, social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp are greatly impacting the lives of youths. These sites have provided a platform whereby the young can create groups based on their common interests and build connections by updating various topics to discuss. However, with social media taking up such a large space in our lives, there is a concern as to whether it is impacting our communicative language; more importantly, our youth’s communicative language. In view of this phenomenon, this article is an attempt to add to the understanding of online communicative language used by youths in social media. Specifically, it reports on the linguistic features of online communicative language used by youths in an academic setting in Facebook. This study employed two research tools, namely Virtual Ethnography and Content Analysis. Data collected was in the form of screen captures and snippets of conversations. Content Analysis was employed to look into the occurrences of languages in contact in phenomena such as code-mixing, code-switching and borrowings of certain words from the first language-second language and vice versa. The findings of the study indicate that the language used by the participants on Facebook consists of a mixture of code-switching, code-mixing, fillers, emoticons, spelling modifications, foreign language words and colloquial Malaysian English.

Imej sebenarnya merupakan pernyataan realiti dan berperanan dalam mewujudkan hubungan khayalan antara peserta dalam imej dan pembaca. Buku teks sekolah dipenuhi dengan imej visual yang kadang-kadang dapat mengartikulasikan makna sosial dan budaya yang lebih kuat dan jelas berbanding teks bertulis. Objektif kajian ini adalah untuk mengkaji dan menggambarkan corak makna representasi yang berkaitan dengan gender dalam imej buku teks bahasa Inggeris Malaysia yang terpilih. Selain itu, kajian bertujuan mengkritik corak imej yang berkaitan dengan stereotaip gender dalam buku teks bahasa Inggeris Malaysia. Analisis data telah mengenal pasti dan membincangkan perwakilan gender melalui ciri-ciri penulisan naratif, budaya dan kategori biologi serta suasana persekitaran. Dapatan kajian menunjukkan terdapat ketidakseimbangan gender yang jelas, iaitu keutamaan diberikan kepada lelaki. Domain yang diletakkan kepada peserta wanita biasanya di ruangan persendirian sedangkan peserta lelaki kebanyakannya diwakili di domain awam. Wanita lebih kerap dikaitkan dengan aktiviti di dalam rumah manakala lelaki digambarkan terlibat dalam pelbagai aktiviti di luar rumah. Wanita turut digambarkan sebagai beremosi, sebaliknya lelaki dicerminkan sebagai bersifat tenang, tegas dan berdaya saing. Oleh kerana sekolah dan buku teks merupakan salah satu kaedah keterlibatan kanak-kanak dalam bidang sosial, adalah penting untuk memastikan bahan pengajaran adalah adil dan tidak berat sebelah terhadap kedua-dua gender. Oleh itu, disarankan agar pihak yang terlibat dalam pengeluaran buku teks sekolah mengkaji semula gambaran lelaki dan wanita yang digambarkan dalam imej. Pihak ini juga perlu menyediakan senario dunia nyata dalam mendidik generasi muda supaya mempunyai minda yang tidak stereotaip berkenaan dengan perwakilan gender dalam konteks Malaysia untuk membantu dalam pembangunan bangsa dan negara.