Similar story, different angles? A comparative study of ‘hard news’ texts in the malay and English print media in Brunei Darussalam

Abstract

In this chapter we compare texts from two Brunei Darussalam newspapers, the English-language Borneo Bulletin and the Malay-language Media Permata. The comparative focus is on ‘hard news’ texts: reports of current events that are considered newsworthy. We use a modified Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework to analyse the texts as product, investigating which aspects and actors are given prominence, e.g. through topicalisation, and whether there are differences in prominence and topicalisation between the English and Malay texts. The initial comparison of reports covering the same story in Malay and English sheds light on whether any translation occurs in the process of preparing the reports for publication, as well as on editorial decisions about what to include and what to leave out of the Malay and English texts. In order to achieve a measure of triangulation, we also present findings from semi-structured interviews conducted with journalists and editors of the two newspapers.