Linguistic Sexism and Gender Stereotypes in Malay-English Drama

Sexism, a silent threat to society since decades ago, has now become more rampant especially with the technology revolution. Past studies have identified that gender inequality occur in school textbooks and children’s story books and efforts have been taken to alleviate the issue. However, there is a huge gap in analysing sexism in the realm of media specifically on tv dramas. This paper attempts to shed light on sexism and gender stereotype in Malay-English TV Drama as represented in the selected sitcom namely Oi Jaga Mulut, Show Me the Money, Kopitiam and Kopitiam the series. Qualitative content analysis was employed in investigating sixteen episodes (4 episodes from each drama). Linguistic sexism was analysed using Nayef and El-Nashar (2019) linguistic taxonomy that includes collocations, presuppositions and transitivity. Meanwhile, social construction theory by Howard and Hollander (1997) was used to explain the social meanings in the gender stereotypes from the characters’ behaviour, physical attributes and gendered social roles in the drama. The findings indicated that the portrayal of women’s images and roles in the television dramas was gradually changing towards a more positive picture by showing them as educated and more independent with professional careers of their own. Nonetheless, there was still discrimination in gender roles and sexism associated with this gender that existed in the Malay-English dramas. Findings were also discussed in relation to culture and social norms that exist in Malaysia. Overall, the results suggest more local television dramas to be oriented to contents that are informative, educational and inspiring women.