Political Discourse Contiguous with Malaysia’s National Culture Policy
Siti Fatihah Selamat and Mansoureh Ebrahimi
Abstract
The Malaysian National Culture Policy (NCP) was established in 1971. However, it had a significant impact in Malaysian cultural development. However, throughout the early years of its implementation, the UMNO-led government needed to ensure in their press statements and speeches the inclusion of non-Malay cultural elements in the implementation of the NCP as a written policy. Here, the core principles were founded on Malay cultural heritage. Political actors appropriated three terms frequently, yet through ambiguity in the context of national culture.
This paper examines the evolution of speeches by UMNO political actors in the use of the terms kebudayaan kebangsaan (national culture), rantau ini (this region), and bangsa Malaysia (Malaysian nation), throughout its history of establishing national culture and the NCP. We also examine the use of these terms and their relationship with UMNO’s ideologies and power struggles. We adopt a blended approach of political discourse analysis and a theory-building process tracing method in order to fulfill the above objectives. The findings suggest that the ambiguity present in the speeches have intentionally sought to garner democratic and electoral support from the Malays and also non-Malays. Ultimately, we hypothesize by drawing on notions of rational choice theory and Malaysian ethnic conflict.
Keywords: National culture, Bangsa Malaysia, political discourse analysis, process tracing