The portrayal of women: a corpus analysis of the representation around the word ‘wanita’ in the Malaysian Hansard Corpus

The term "women's issues" is often used too broadly, which can obscure the specific challenges women face. Understanding how parliamentarians categorize women's issues is crucial for grasping their perspectives from a political dimension. This allows politicians to shape disc...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Anis Nadiah Che Abdul Rahman
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 2024
Online Access:http://journalarticle.ukm.my/25015/
http://journalarticle.ukm.my/25015/1/Gema%20Online_24_4_9.pdf
_version_ 1848816244944273408
author Anis Nadiah Che Abdul Rahman,
author_facet Anis Nadiah Che Abdul Rahman,
author_sort Anis Nadiah Che Abdul Rahman,
building UKM Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description The term "women's issues" is often used too broadly, which can obscure the specific challenges women face. Understanding how parliamentarians categorize women's issues is crucial for grasping their perspectives from a political dimension. This allows politicians to shape discussions through their speeches, as their chosen words significantly influence how women's issues are framed and contextualized. This paper examines the Malaysian Hansard Corpus, a collection of parliamentary debates, to analyze how politicians conceptualize and present women as a political issue over a period of 61 years. Using corpus linguistics, this study investigates the representation of women through noun collocates of 'wanita' (woman). WordSmith Tool 7.0 and a Part of Speech tagger extracted a list of collocates with semantic content to analyze the semantic preferences associated with the term 'wanita' over time. The findings indicate that politicians semantically associate 'wanita' with categories related to national identity, attributes, conflict, culture, religion, public affairs, and quantification. Notably, discussions surrounding women's issues have become more favorable throughout parliamentary sessions. This research contributes to corpus linguistics by demonstrating how linguistic patterns can reveal shifts in political discourse over time. By systematizing these findings, the study provides a framework for understanding women's issues in Malaysian parliamentary debates through their semantic representations, illuminating how language use reflects evolving attitudes and priorities regarding women's rights and representation in political contexts.
first_indexed 2025-11-15T01:02:48Z
format Article
id oai:generic.eprints.org:25015
institution Universiti Kebangasaan Malaysia
institution_category Local University
language English
last_indexed 2025-11-15T01:02:48Z
publishDate 2024
publisher Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
recordtype eprints
repository_type Digital Repository
spelling oai:generic.eprints.org:250152025-04-10T08:38:35Z http://journalarticle.ukm.my/25015/ The portrayal of women: a corpus analysis of the representation around the word ‘wanita’ in the Malaysian Hansard Corpus Anis Nadiah Che Abdul Rahman, The term "women's issues" is often used too broadly, which can obscure the specific challenges women face. Understanding how parliamentarians categorize women's issues is crucial for grasping their perspectives from a political dimension. This allows politicians to shape discussions through their speeches, as their chosen words significantly influence how women's issues are framed and contextualized. This paper examines the Malaysian Hansard Corpus, a collection of parliamentary debates, to analyze how politicians conceptualize and present women as a political issue over a period of 61 years. Using corpus linguistics, this study investigates the representation of women through noun collocates of 'wanita' (woman). WordSmith Tool 7.0 and a Part of Speech tagger extracted a list of collocates with semantic content to analyze the semantic preferences associated with the term 'wanita' over time. The findings indicate that politicians semantically associate 'wanita' with categories related to national identity, attributes, conflict, culture, religion, public affairs, and quantification. Notably, discussions surrounding women's issues have become more favorable throughout parliamentary sessions. This research contributes to corpus linguistics by demonstrating how linguistic patterns can reveal shifts in political discourse over time. By systematizing these findings, the study provides a framework for understanding women's issues in Malaysian parliamentary debates through their semantic representations, illuminating how language use reflects evolving attitudes and priorities regarding women's rights and representation in political contexts. Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 2024 Article PeerReviewed application/pdf en http://journalarticle.ukm.my/25015/1/Gema%20Online_24_4_9.pdf Anis Nadiah Che Abdul Rahman, (2024) The portrayal of women: a corpus analysis of the representation around the word ‘wanita’ in the Malaysian Hansard Corpus. GEMA: Online Journal of Language Studies, 24 (4). pp. 149-172. ISSN 1675-8021 https://ejournal.ukm.my/gema/issue/view/1775
spellingShingle Anis Nadiah Che Abdul Rahman,
The portrayal of women: a corpus analysis of the representation around the word ‘wanita’ in the Malaysian Hansard Corpus
title The portrayal of women: a corpus analysis of the representation around the word ‘wanita’ in the Malaysian Hansard Corpus
title_full The portrayal of women: a corpus analysis of the representation around the word ‘wanita’ in the Malaysian Hansard Corpus
title_fullStr The portrayal of women: a corpus analysis of the representation around the word ‘wanita’ in the Malaysian Hansard Corpus
title_full_unstemmed The portrayal of women: a corpus analysis of the representation around the word ‘wanita’ in the Malaysian Hansard Corpus
title_short The portrayal of women: a corpus analysis of the representation around the word ‘wanita’ in the Malaysian Hansard Corpus
title_sort portrayal of women: a corpus analysis of the representation around the word ‘wanita’ in the malaysian hansard corpus
url http://journalarticle.ukm.my/25015/
http://journalarticle.ukm.my/25015/
http://journalarticle.ukm.my/25015/1/Gema%20Online_24_4_9.pdf