The Extended Meanings of Setia/Loyal: A Corpus-Based Analysis

Abstract

Setia/Loyal is one of the most treasured values in life and in the formation of nation building in a country such as Malaysia. This is proven as setia/loyalty is enshrined as the second principle in the Rukun Negara (national philosophy) of Malaysia after the first principle which is belief in God. To date, the concept of 1Malaysia introduced by Malaysia‟s 6th Prime Minister has also outlined setia/loyal as an agent and important component that should be embraced by the peoplein order to achieve unity and integration in a multi-racial country such as Malaysia. However, the irony that is research in the field of anthropology and sociology has often highlighted setia/loyal but with negative connotations as it is claimed that by promoting the value of setia/loyal it perpetuates feudalism which give rise to the expression such as blind loyalty. This paper aims to present the understanding of the concept of setia/loyal through the use of a linguistic analysis to explore the actual meaning of the concept. Data used for this study is corpus taken from the newspaper. An analysis on the extended meanings of setia/loyal shows that it has gone through considerable transformations.