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The present study was conducted to analyse the use of word order in job interviews. The data was collected from participants in an organisation in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Ten candidates of different races between the ages of 23 and 25 participated in the study. Radford's syntactic theory of word order was employed to qualitatively analyse the data. It was found that positive sentences were predominantly used by the selected (n = 10; 47.4%) compared to the not selected (n = 10; 44.0%) and keep in view (KIV) (n = 23; 39.0%) job candidates. The findings further revealed that the types of word order used in utterances by the selected candidates were different compared to those who were not chosen for interviews. Selected candidates used more negative sentences, subordinate clauses, and time expression in sentences, whereas those who were not selected utilised adverbs of manner in negative sentences, subordinate clauses, and time expression in sentences, while the not selected candidates only used the position of adverbs. On the other hand, the KIV candidates used positive sentences, subordinate clauses and word order in questions in their utterances. The study can provide important contributions to knowledge on the use of English when developing employment course modules emphasising word order as an essential element in portraying good English language proficiency in job interviews.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the words and phrases used by student graduates in job interviews. Twenty-Seven Malaysian graduates participated in the study. "How to face challenges" was the focal theme chosen for analysis of the data. The findings indicated that successful interviewees covered six out of seven important employability skills, while interviewees on the reserve list covered only four of the employability skills, and the unsuccessful interviewees covered only three of the seven skills. Successful interviewees were deemed able to portray high level proficiency by using the most salient words and phrases to express their employability skills in the interviews. It is expected that this study will encourage current undergraduates to develop high level language proficiency regarding their employability and foster training in this area by educational institutions so as to benefit their students.

Diplomatic press releases play a significant role in presenting a nation's position about global issues to the local and global communities. A nation's stance and decisions communicated via press releases need to be mitigated and expressed tactfully and cautiously to avoid distress leading to confrontations. As a mitigating device, hedging has been identified as an effective pragmatic strategy in reducing potentially damaging reactions, therefore encouraging effective diplomatic communication. This paper presents a content analysis of 27 press releases on world crises by the Malaysian Ministry of Foreign Affairs between May 2020 and May 2022. The identification and coding of hedging items were completed manually by considering context and co-text using a framework of Identification Criteria of Hedging Devices. The identified hedges were analysed pragmatically to determine their functions in diplomatic communication. The analysis reveals that hedges in diplomatic press releases by the Ministry of foreign affairs serve several functions which highlight the influence of culture on diplomatic stance-taking. It should be noted that the absence of hedges in some of the press releases confirms various writing guidelines that the genre values factual, direct, and accurate information. These findings are beneficial for successful intercultural diplomatic communication and accordingly global peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the spoken conversations between Millennial undergraduates and their lecturers regarding the manner in which the students plead with their lecturers for additional time to complete their assignments. The research aimed to investigate the approaches used by these students through analyses-based politeness strategies and also whether approaches divergent from those strategies have been introduced by the Millennial undergraduates. Ten undergraduates were selected for participation in simulated situations in which their assignments were delayed for submission to their lecturers. The duration of each simulation was 3 minutes, and they were recorded and transcribed with annotations based on transcription notation symbols and coding based on the politeness strategy. The lecturers involved in the study were interviewed to determine their perspectives on the students' ability to converse courteously and their perceptions on the potential for success in obtaining assignment submission deadline extensions. Apart from findings related to politeness strategies, the research revealed that Millennials also employ approaches such as negative courteousness, positive courteousness, and off-record indirect strategies to achieve their goal of extending the deadline for assignment submission. These Millennials used of politeness strategies can therefore be incorporated within (Brown and Levinson 1978) politeness theory as a separate kind of hierarchy of needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study adopted a sequential approach which includes 200 respondents chosen via systematic random sampling method from the Management and Science University. This study aims to investigate the impact of extracurricular activities (ECA) on undergraduates' academic performance as well as enhancement of their interpersonal skills. The study used frequency test, descriptive statistics, and linear regression as well as semi-structured interviews to analyse data. On the whole, the results showed that though students perceived participation in extracurricular activities enhance their academic performance, a non-significant regression equation was found in the analysis (F(1, 198)=0.70, p>.0.5 with R=.019 and an R-Squared (R2) of .000, indicating that there is no significant relationship between extracurricular activities and academic performance. However, for enhancement of interpersonal skills through extracurricular activities, a substantial regression equation was found (F(1, 198)=116.5, p<.01, with R=.610 and an RSquared of .375. The study ends with recommendations for future research to heighten the positive impact of ECA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing concern over the influx of foreign women in Malaysia as sex workers, has continually gained the attention of the local media particularly the mainstream newspapers. The media, despite playing an instrumental role in bringing about social transformation, has the ability to portray the foreign women in a positive way or to discriminate against them. This study, based on qualitative analysis, represents an attempt to study a social problem particularly in the way that foreign women in sex work have been represented in Malaysia by the mainstream English-language newspapers. The analytical tools of the discourse-historical approach (DHA) are employed in the analysis of the news articles. In particular, the argumentation strategy in the DHA demonstrates that a number of topoi (i.e., the topoi of control, number, threat, and victimisation) have been employed to represent foreign sex workers in the media. Investigation of the newspaper extracts from New Straits Times and The Star generally revealed that the media have portrayed foreign women in sex work in the offender orientation frame more so than as victims. Furthermore, foreign sex workers are also positioned negatively because of their illegal migrant status, making them doubly discriminated against. Such representations directly impact the women's lives, leading to further discrimination on the basis of their trade and illegal migrant status, denying them a voice and depriving them of their legal rights. The paper concludes by discussing the contributions of the research and emphasises the need for social justice for these marginalised women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sex workers represent a community subject to constant stigmatisation and discrimination yet provide an excellent source of data for research about sex work. As part of a larger project on the discursive representations of sex workers in Malaysia, in this article we examine some methodological constraints associated with researching the vulnerable and hard-to-reach population of female transnational sex workers in Malaysia. We discuss the problems in gaining access to these workers, establishing trust and rapport with them, and confronting language barriers. The data for this research were obtained from interviews conducted with 15 sex workers from India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam. The interviews were conducted at a national shelter for rescued sex workers and in the field. By describing the methodological constraints that we encountered during data collection, we hope to expose some of the obstacles in the hope that doing so will benefit ethnographic researchers working with transnational sex workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]