Dewan Masyarakat: A Discourse Study on Ethics Consciousness of the Malays: 1991–2000

Abstract

Media plays a significant role in communicating knowledge and information to targeted members of the society to develop public consciousness. Among the indicators of consciousness includes books, newspapers, magazines and speech texts. They are generally regarded as barometers of order and indicators of social conscience. This discourse study primarily aims to analyze the ethics consciousness as expressed in the Malay community through Dewan Masyarakat (DM) from 1991-2000, a publication by Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP), Malaysia. It describes the discourse on ethics, identifying trends and contexts of the coverage and interpreting the emergence and evolution of the discourse from 1991-2000. The study has therefore resonated the thoughts of DM authors, in driving the ethics consciousness among the Malay Muslim readers while analyzing its coverage on ethics during the decade, 1991- 2000. This study has used 47 out of 235 selected DM articles of the full study as a unit of analysis and it will apply the discourse and content analyses as the research methods. This study has found that despite the government’s support to alleviate poverty and improve the living status of the Malay community, there is an increase in social problems among this ethnic group, challenging ethics consciousness while the Malaysian economy was exuberantly transforming into an industrial nation, being one of the “Asian Tigers” under Mahathir’s era from 1991-2000. This study has contributed to the limited value-based studies within Malaysian contexts from multidisciplinary approaches.