Abstract. Although many studies have emerged examining media representations of Muslims and Islam through the lens of discourse analysis, it is unfortunate that similar studies focusing on glocalised marketing strategies targeted at Muslims have been scarce, especially at a time when market research analysts have identified Muslims as constituting one of the fastest growing consumer segments in the world. In order to tap into this promising market, a number of cosmetics companies have left no stones unturned in their efforts to convince Muslim consumers that their products are Shariah-compliant. Whether or not this claim has any truth value, it is persuasive, as it raises awareness about the existence of halal cosmetics. In line with this, the present study examined the linguistic and non-linguistic semiotic features employed by the halal cosmetics companies to promote their products to Muslim consumers in order to expose the dominant discourses, underlying meanings and hidden ideologies. A qualitative research design was employed to study the marketing websites of five halal cosmetics companies. Analysis was carried out using Fairclough's (1992) threedimensional model of critical discourse analysis. Findings call attention to the commodification of Islam, revealing how marketers are transforming cosmetics into powerful symbols representing religious correctness and values, indices of one's piety.
The COVID-19 pandemic has induced many revisions in the Malaysian education system, and it is imperative to investigate the consequences of these changes on the major stakeholders: the students, educators, parents/guardians, and the administrators. The current qualitative study was conducted to accumulate the challenges faced by these major stakeholders at the tertiary level, which were scrutinized further to determine their effects on Malaysian society. The research revealed that the participants experienced negative and positive results in various aspects like teaching and learning, finance, physical and mental health, as well as cognitive maturity, according to their respective roles in their tertiary establishments. While concerns such as the negative perceptions towards OTL by the stakeholders could be resolved internally by refocusing their mindset, the major ones like the void between the upper and lower socio-economic classes created by the digital divide could only be solved by the joined efforts of the Malaysian government and other non-governmental organizations.
Since the Covid-19 vaccination rollout, the news media has played an essential role in reporting the vaccine-related news to reduce the risk of getting and spreading the Covid-19 disease. However, people nowadays are preoccupied with busy schedules that they just glance at the news headlines and determine what they imply. If a word, phrase, or sentence in the headlines has more than one interpretation, they may misinterpret them and receive the wrong information. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the lexical and syntactic ambiguity in the vaccines headlines of The Star news and to determine how these ambiguities affected the readers’ interpretation of the headlines. After collecting the headlines from The Star news, the definitions of the words and phrases were deduced using Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, while the sentence structures were identified using parsing. A questionnaire was also disseminated to the respondents to obtain different interpretations of the words or sentences. Next, a semi-structured interview was conducted with nine participants from three different educational backgrounds. The interviews were then transcribed and analysed thematically. The findings revealed that the lexical and syntactic ambiguity existed in the vaccine-related news headlines in The Star, with five lexical ambiguities and three syntactic ambiguities. Nonetheless, the participants were not affected by ambiguities because of the context and knowledge of the topic. The research study also posed a few limitations and gaps, where the other considerations and a larger sample of participants could be considered.
The English language is a global language as it’s the most commonly spoken language in the world by many people around the world. Nevertheless, it is also the language of international business and a necessity for people to speak English if they are to enter a corporate workforce. The English language is significant for employment as organizations are requiring and accepting applicants with good English proficiency. Therefore, it is vital for a student to learn and enhance their English language for a promising future. In learning and becoming proficient in the English Language, students are unable to grasp all of the language skills, especially when it comes to speaking skills. They face multiple challenges in communicating the language in the tertiary level of education as speaking skills is a stepping stone to their career. Thus, future graduates are unaware of the importance of English Language speaking skill as it is one of the necessities to be competitive in a global workforce. This research investigated the undergraduates’ perception and challenges on the importance of English language skill and mixed-method was adopted in this study. The results showed that the students understand the importance of English Language speaking skill and also, they have highlighted the challenges of improving their speaking skills.
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