SEMANTIC ANALYSIS OF ARABIC LOANWORDS IN MALAYSIAN POLITICAL DISCOURSE

Abstract

Loanwords are words borrowed from one language and incorporated into another. They may originate from a wide range of languages and can be modified to adhere to the phonological and grammatical conventions of the receiving language. The Malay language consists of a vast number of words borrowed from various languages, including Arabic. Arabic loanwords have helped develop the Malay language by enriching and diversifying its vocabulary. While Arabic loanwords are used extensively within the Islamic religious context, they are also employed in other fields, including politics. In Malaysia, where Malay is the official language, the use of Arabic loanwords is common in the political sense. Some Arabic loanwords related to politics have become so integrated into Malay that the pronunciation no longer sounds foreign, while others maintain the sound characteristics of Arabic. This study analyzed the use of Arabic loanwords in the current Malaysian political discourse via mainstream media, specifically newspapers and political blogs, from 2022 to 2023. The Arabic loanwords were then comparatively analyzed in terms of their lexical meaning in the donor and receiving language, as well as their contextual meaning in Malaysian politics. The findings of this study suggest that the intermixing between Islam and politics in Malaysia may have fueled the pervasiveness and trendiness of the use of Arabic loanwords in lieu of equivalent native words and loanwords of English origin, and competing loanword equivalents which have been phonologically modified.