Exploring Malaysia’s 2021 Budget through Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies: (De)legitimation in Online News

• Published in: Asia in Transition
• Main Author: Joharry S.A.; Kasmani M.F.
• Format: Book chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH 2023
• Online Access: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85145833006&doi=10.1007%2f978-981-19-5334-7_11&partnerID=40&md5=16f72d0e54ae32e37f4d49f3db4ed0fb

This chapter examines how a particular social event, Malaysia’s 2021 budget is reported in The Star Online. It aims to analyse the discourse surrounding the budget through use of corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS). Using corpus linguistic techniques, a specialised corpus is firstly compiled of the phrase ‘Budget 2021’ in The Star Online from one month before and after Parliament passed the budget on 26 November 2020. A total of 889 articles ranging from a number of sections (e.g. Nation, Letters, and Business) were identified from the website that resulted in 339,651 words. Standard corpus methods were employed namely, the investigation of frequency lists, collocational patterns as well as examining the corpus in more detail via concordance. Findings from the Budget 2021 corpus show patterns of how language is used to describe, explain as well as oppose a political issue like the national budget, which may influence how governance achieves legitimacy in the eyes of the public. It also reveals how discursive meanings can be viewed in a more systematic way. © 2023, The Author(s).