The Use of American and British Lexis in Brunei English

In pronunciation, influenced by American English, a shift in Brunei English can be observed in the increasing use of [r] in tokens such as car and heard particularly among younger speakers whose pronunciation may be influenced by American English. In contrast, older speakers tend to omit the [r] sound in these tokens as their pronunciation may be more influenced by British English. However, it is unclear whether American English has influenced the vocabulary of Brunei English speakers as the education system in Brunei favours British English due to its historical ties with Britain. This paper analyses the use of American and British lexical items between three age groups: 20 in-service teachers aged between 29 to 35 years old, 20 university undergraduates aged between 19 to 25 years old, and 20 secondary school students who are within the 11 to 15 age range. Each age group has 10 female and 10 male participants and they were asked to name seven objects shown to them on Power point slides. Their responses were recorded and compared between the age groups and between female and male data. The analysis is supplemented with recorded data from interviews with all 60 participants to determine instances of American and British lexical items in casual speech. It was found that there is a higher occurrence of American than British lexical items in all three groups and the interview data supports the findings in the main data. Thus, providing further evidence for the Americanisation of Brunei English and that Brunei English is undergoing change.

‘Can We See It?’: Contextualizing ‘Deforestation’ from an English-Medium Science Textbook for a Primary School Level

Understanding an English-medium science textbook is possibly challenging for some students. It is, for example, due to the language used. To deal with this issue, construing the use of the other mode, such as visual images, along with the verbal text is regarded useful. Thereby, the construal of multimodality in an English-medium science textbook becomes crucial. Albeit a myriad of inspections on multimodality exists, but to the best of the writer’s knowledge, such investigation with respect to an English-medium science textbook, particularly at a primary school level, was found to be limited. Therefore, this study aimed to scrutinize the verbal text and visual image presented in a science textbook used for a primary school level which is presented in English. To that end, a descriptive research design was employed. In this regard, a systemic functional multimodal discourse analysis (SF-MDA) within the trinocular metafunctions encompassing ideational, interpersonal, and textual metafunctions was utilized. The systemic functional linguistics theory, the grammar of visual design, intersemiotic complementarity, and logico-semantics were the frameworks employed to analyze the artefact, the English-medium science textbook. The findings revealed that the visual image and verbal text interact with one another within the three metafunctions. Given the interaction between the two modes, the present study suggests that both teachers and students are required to take into considerations and be aware of the potential or roles of images along with the verbal text, i.e. the images are not merely accessories, but instead, these are able to assist the comprehension of the science materials learned.

Discourse Analysis of Cosmetic Maybelline Advertising

The writing of words in print media advertisements is certainly influenced by the elements and structures of its own discourse. This study analyzes the elements and structures of cosmetic advertising discourse used by cosmetic manufacturers in promoting their products. The research approach used in this research is qualitative research by taking samples from Maybelline cosmetic advertisements contained in Seventeen Magazine 2012. Based on the analysis of elements and structures contained in Maybelline cosmetic advertisements, the elements used in the discourse of cosmetic advertisements are verbal elements and visual elements. while the structure of the discourse that appears is the opening, the content and the closing.

Wordplay “Loss” in Translation:

Wordplay can be described as the way of making or using words to create additional meaning for some purposes. Using a qualitative approach, this study discusses the wordplay translation in literary work especially in dystopian fiction using Delabastita’s translation techniques of wordplay. The data derived from a novel entitled The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood as the source text and its subsequent translation in Bahasa Indonesia entitled The Handmaid’s Tale – Kisah Sang Handmaid as the target text. From 50 data retrieved, the result shows that the most frequently applied technique in wordplay translation is Wordplay to Non-Wordplay that appears 25 times or 50%. The result of this study illustrates that the translation of wordplay in this literary work tends not to preserve the author’s style of writing but one of the author’s intended meanings.

An Analysis of Translation Shift of Adjective Phrases in the Subtitle of 2019 Movie “Jumanji: The Next Level”

The research aims to identify the translation shift and describe the equivalence of adjective phrases found in the Jumanji: The Next Level movie and its subtitling. To get the analysis result, translation shift proposed by Catford (1965) and degree of equivalence proposed by Bell (1991) are used in this research. The research is conducted by using descriptive qualitative method in analyzing the data and total sampling technique. The data of this research are 104 English adjective phrases taken from Jumanji: The Next Level movie and their subtitles in Indonesia that is translated by Pein Akatsuki. The results of this research for the types of translation shift are 2 level shift, 59 structure shift, 19 class shift, 22 unit shift, and 2 intra system shift. Meanwhile, the result for the equivalence are 64 complete meaning, 3 increased meaning, 26 decreased meaning, and 11 non equivalent meaning in the category of different meaning. This current research explores adjective phrase that has not been much discussed by other scholars.

‘Get in touch with yourself’: The Structure of Relationship Advice in Women’s Magazines

This study investigates the way sex and relationship advice articles are structured in four English language women’s magazines. Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire were selected from the US, and Female and Her World from Malaysia. Forty articles were selected for the analysis. The study adopts Machin and Van Leeuwen’s (2003) problem-solution structure, besides using discourse pragmatic analysis. By studying this genre in the two different contexts, one of the main things that emerged is that this particular genre is more complex and diverse than what other researchers have found. The writers of the advice resort to various strategies and techniques to attract women to read these articles. They also have to balance social and cultural sensitivities with their message of freedom and liberation for women as appeared in the Malaysian data. Thus, studying this genre gives useful insights on how culture affects the texts and vice-versa.

A Study of Noun Phrase Awareness at the Eighth Graders of Two Islamic Junior High Schools in Makassar

Syntactic awareness has been linked to reading comprehension skills. In Junior high schools, syntactic awareness of noun phrases can be very important for the students in the Indonesian context because it can improve their reading comprehension. However, teaching noun phrases for the students can be challenging due to the grammar difference. The junior high school student’s noun phrase awareness was measured using a developed test. It consists of 28 questions with seven noun categories. The reliability test was conducted using KR-20 and the result was .90. The study indicated the average score of the students was 69.07 (fair). Of the seven noun phrases category, nominal possessors and conjoined noun phrases were good, prenominal possessors, multiple genitive constructs, alienable and inalienable possessions, and ad-positional phrases were fair, and nonreferential generative was weak. Referring to the result of the research, it is suggested to improve the student’s noun phrase awareness to enhance their reading comprehension.

The Portrayal of Character Building in American Animation Film Frozen

There is no doubt that having good characters is essential to everyone in society. Character is even a major consideration in the world of education. For this reason, character building is considered important to be explored. By using entertainment media such as movie, this library research concentrates on the character building symbolized through the American animation films Frozen (2013) and Frozen II (2019). Besides the main data from the films, reference sources in the form of books and journals were also used for analysis. Hall’s theory of representation was applied to analyze the data gathered for this study such as dialogs and the description of scenes from the films to identify how the character building is represented through the films as well as to understand the essence of character building. The result showed that the animation films observed in this study can represent good characters through seven values such as bravery, politeness, sacrifice, empathy, curiosity, confidence, and caring. Additionally, this study also reveals that the concept of character is associated with life values, morality and attitude and therefore, character building is significant to shape people with quality in order to create peace and harmony in society. Through this study, it expected that the findings can contribute to the development of the theory in humanities and education and it can provide better understanding to people about character building through American animated films.

Examining Rosalind/Ganymede’s and Viola/Cesario’s Disguised Bodies in Shakespeare’s As You Like It and Twelfth Night

In this article, I explore the disguised body in two of Shakespeare’s comedies As You Like It and Twelfth Night. Since the human body can be problematized, it is worth trying to examine Rosalind’s and Viola’s disguised bodies under the lens of Erving Goffman’s dramaturgy theory. This theory examines how people present themselves differently depending on their circumstances. In contextualizing the exploration of the disguised bodies, I employ the script of As You Like It and Twelfth Night as the primary data source. The result shows that both main characters in the plays disguise themselves as men and their disguised bodies symbolize new meanings namely safety and freedom. Rosalind’s and Viola’s symbolic bodies have transformed into agentic bodies from which these bodies enable them to help the men they love. The agentic quality of Rosalind’s and Viola’s bodies lies in their ability to manage, control, and present their bodies by whom they interact.

Ethnography Study about Fanaticism of “Figure Purwokerto” Community's Members

This research is aimed to figuring out the fanaticism from the members of an action figure community in Purwokerto called “Figure Purwokerto”. “Figure Purwokerto” community is an action figure community located in Purwokerto, Central Java, Indonesia. The total of the member is about 241 people from different age and culture. The researchers use focus group discussion and interview as the method to gain the information that the researcher needed for research purposes. The researchers applies some theories in order to obtain further analysis related to the issue. Fanaticism theory is used to figure out the fanaticism of “Figure Purwokerto” community’s members. Another theory, the Cultural Studies: Cultural Consumption Research, is added to make a deeper analysis about the consumption of culture from the members of the community. The scope of this research is cultural studies under the umbrella of English Studies which relates to American culture and supremacy with action figure as the media. Furthermore, the disscussion of this study is divided into two main parts which correspondent with the fanaticism happened in Figure Purwokerto community. The first part explains the portrayal of the fanaticism from the members of the community. The characteristics of a person can be said as a fanatics are included in this part. The second part explains the cultural relation between the members and the action figure as a culture. The result of this research concludes that the members are fanatic based on several aspects and characteristics of a fanatic. This research was also conducted to make another prespective of fanaticism which is seen as a bad term due to it’s relation to religion fanaticism.