LEXICAL BORROWING IN MALAYSIAN ONLINE NEWSPAPER EDITORIALS: A CORPUS-BASED APPROACH

Abstract

Lexical borrowing is words that have been transferred from the native language and integrated into a different language (Hamdi, 2017). Studies on newspaper editorials have drawn a large readership, yet it is not been given enough coverage in terms of borrowed words used by the editors in English language newspapers. This paper examined the types and frequencies of lexical borrowing. This paper used both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Haugen's (as cited in Annab, 2019) pioneering work of lexical borrowing was used in this research. Three forms of lexical borrowing, namely loanwords, compound blends, and loan transitions/claque were found. In this paper, four months of editorials from The Star Online were transferred into a text files by using Microsoft Word and imported into WordSmith Tool version 6 (henceforth WST 6) to generate the data. Results reflect that the highest frequency of lexical features identified was loanwords (84%), followed by compound blends (9%), and loan transitions (7.5%). The top three highest borrowed words used by editors were the words Pakatan, Datuk, and Barisan. Conclusively, as large amounts of borrowed words exist in English editorials, this phenomenon should be eliminated. This is because one of the ways to elevate Malaysian English (henceforth ME) to meet and sustain with the International level is to uphold the quality of the English language in newspapers. Besides, relevant stakeholders should work together to increase the quality of editorials as newspapers are part of authentic materials used in education.