The Use of Nouns in Exhibition Texts at the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia

Abstract

Exhibition texts are commonly found alongside exhibitions in a museum. The texts are there to serve specific purposes in the overall context of the museum, and the linguistic features that are found within the texts are assumed to be functional and serve the respective purposes of the museum. This paper investigates the use of one of the linguistic features, i.e nouns, in the texts that accompany displays at the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia. The nouns are examined in terms of their frequency of use and the extend in which the nouns function in terms of serving the purposes of exhibition texts in the museum context. The findings reveal that nouns pertaining to locations and artefacts are the most frequently used, and they reflect the context of the studied museum which is Islamic history and civilisation. In addition, different categories of nouns, such as names of people, are also found to serve the communicative purpose of the exhibition texts. This study contributes to the linguistic description of the discourse of art and explains the relations between text, museum exhibits and visitors. It may benefit linguistic scholars and practitioners as the findings also suggest that the use of linguistic features can attract visitors to look at the exhibits.