Health is wealth: a corpus-driven analysis of the portrayal of mental health in Malaysian English online newspapers
In view of the increase mental health cases in Malaysia, it is timely to examine how Malaysian newspapers portray mental health issues. A corpus-driven approach was employed to identify the adjective collocates for the node word mental health, determine the semantic grouping of the collocates...
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| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
2021
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| Online Access: | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/17255/1/47167-156854-2-PB.pdf http://journalarticle.ukm.my/17255/ https://ejournal.ukm.my/gema/issue/view/1397 |
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| Institution: | Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia |
| Language: | English |
| Summary: | In view of the increase mental health cases in Malaysia, it is timely to examine how Malaysian
newspapers portray mental health issues. A corpus-driven approach was employed to identify
the adjective collocates for the node word mental health, determine the semantic grouping of
the collocates and investigate the portrayal of mental health issues in two newspapers. A total
of 585 news articles, from January 2020 to December 2020 were collected from the New Straits
Times and The Star Online. The Antconc 3.5.8 software was used to generate the collocates
and a discourse analysis approach was employed to examine how mental health issues were
portrayed. 22 adjective collocates were identified in the New Straits Times, while 34 adjective
collocates were extracted from The Star Online. 13 similar adjective collocates were found and
based on the 13 adjective collocates, four semantic group of adjectives (emotive,
miscellaneous, size and evaluative) were identified. A discourse analysis on the portrayal of
mental health issues in the two newspapers seemed positive because the reports concentrated
on the initiatives taken by the government and NGOs to handle mental health situations in
Malaysia, with the aim of educating the public and raising their awareness about mental health.
The present study has contributed significantly to research on mental health in the Asian
context, since the review of literature revealed that research on mental health were mostly from
the West. Furthermore, a corpus-driven approach which is systematic and rigorous allows for
the comparison of the language across large datasets. |
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