Local culture-related lexical items in Malaysian Chinese newspapers / Ng Jie Ee

Ng , Jie Ee (2023) Local culture-related lexical items in Malaysian Chinese newspapers / Ng Jie Ee. Masters thesis, Universiti Malaya.

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Abstract

Malaysian Chinese language has a different vocabulary from that of other regions due to its unique social and geographical circumstances. As a member of Malaysia’s Chinese community, we have all the more reason to compile the discourse’s vocabulary in recent years. As a result, this study will examine local culture-related Chinese lexical items in Malaysian Chinese newspapers from three angles: (i) Identify the categories and word classes of these lexical items; (ii) Analyse the word formation of these lexical items, and (iii) Explore the causes of emergence of these lexical items. For textual and comparative analyses, a total of 135 words were collected from the supplements of four Malaysian Chinese newspapers (from 4 April 2021 to 4 July 2021). The findings for the first research objective revealed that four categories of these lexical items were people’s livelihood, festival customs and religion, communication and conversation, food and dining, also the nouns are the most used. For the second research objective, word formation of borrowing scored the highest in total. The study also discovered, through expert interviews, that the two main reasons for the formation of these words are language factors and social factors. Furthermore, by analyzing Malaysian word formation patterns, the study discovered a new type of word formation, namely the mixmode pattern, which is not mentioned in Chinese word formation theories. The present research shows that the Malaysian Chinese lexical items are mainly reflected in the absorption of foreign words and the new words created by the local Chinese language users.

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