INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES, PHILOSOPHY AND LANGUAGES (IJHPL)

OVERCOMING IMPLEMENTATION HURDLES IN MALAY LANGUAGE CLASSROOM-BASED ASSESSMENT WITH GENERATIVE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (GEN-AI)

Siti Haryanti Osaman, Mohd Effendi Ewan Mohd Matore, Niusila Faamanatu-Eteuati — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0800

Designed to meet the ministry's core vision, the Malaysian Ministry of Education’s Strategic Plan 2024–2030 outlines key institutional goals. However, recent assessments of Classroom-Based Assessment (PBD) reveal a distinct gap in integrating Generative AI (Gen-AI) into Malay language testing. This missing link creates barriers that directly hinder effective teaching and learning. Consequently, the objective of this paper is to propose the strategy on the barriers of implementing PBD in the Malay language assessment subject using GenAI. The implications of the study are discussed with a focus on policy, training, and PBD practices. Furthermore, the outlined strategies include enhancing teacher training through professional development programs, empowering the use of technology in assessment to increase efficiency, and continuously collecting and analyzing data to identify strengths and weaknesses in teaching and learning. The limitations of this discussion are confined to the scope of GenAI in the Malay language, as well as general validity and reliability. Therefore, it is recommended that further research be conducted, specifically focusing on improving the validity and reliability of GenAI instruments for the Malay language from diverse perspectives. To conclude, adopting GenAI for Malay language assessment requires a stakeholder-centric approach. Success hinges on two critical factors: the practical design of the evaluation tools and the readiness of school personnel to implement them.

METROSEXUALS IN CHINA’S ENGLISH-LANGUAGE STATE MEDIA: A (DE)LEGITIMATION ANALYSIS OF MASCULINITY RECONSTRUCTION

Hongmei Sun — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0800

While previous studies on metrosexuality have mainly focused on participants lived experiences and identity construction, relatively few studies have examined how metrosexuality is represented and negotiated within public media discourse. Metrosexuality refers to a form of masculinity characterized by men’s attention to grooming, appearance, fashion, and aesthetic consumption. Addressing this gap, the present study adopts a media discourse approach to examine representations of metrosexuality in China’s English-language state media. Drawing on a corpus of newspaper articles, the study combines Van Leeuwen’s (2007) and Mackay’s (2015) legitimation frameworks with Clarke and Braun’s (2018) thematic analysis to investigate how metrosexual men are constructed in state media narratives, what dominant themes emerge from these representations, and what broader sociocultural meanings and implications they convey. Through this integrated methodological approach, the study explores how state media participate in the transformation and reconstruction of masculinity in contemporary China. The findings suggest that state media generally legitimize male grooming, self-management, and appearance consciousness by associating them with professionalism, modernity, competitiveness, and social refinement. However, while these representations appear to diversify and expand acceptable masculine expressions, they simultaneously construct a new configuration of hegemonic masculinity grounded in neoliberal ideals of bodily discipline, self-surveillance, consumerism, and socioeconomic privilege.

DISCURSIVE STRUGGLES OF MARGINALIZED WOMEN IN THE POLYPHONIC NOVEL “BITTER ORANGE TREE” THROUGH BAKHTIN`S DIALOGUE THEORY

Ren Jianing, Pabiyah Hajimaming @ Pabiyah Toklubok, Nik Farhan Mustapha — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0800

The novel “bitter Orange Tree” by Omani novelist Jokha al-harthi is characterized by polyphony; the polyphonic structure of the novel allows for a more comprehensive portrayal of its dialogic nature and the characters’ independent voices. Drawing upon “feminist dialogics”, a feminist reconstruction of Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogic theory, this study conducts a systematic narrative and textual analysis of the novel to explore female discourse power. Specifically, it aims to examine how marginalized women achieve discursive resistance at both micro- and macro-dialogic levels within a polyphonic narrative space. The findings reveal that Al-harthi employs Bakhtinian polyphonic strategies to unfold discursive resistance across three interrelated dimensions. First, at the macro-level, the novel constructs a "chronotope" spanning the diasporic spaces of London and the rural landscapes of Oman, revealing the spiritual diaspora and spatial breakthroughs of female subjects amid historical fragmentation. Second, at the micro-discursive level, marginalized women implicitly resist patriarchal discipline through character dialogues, strategically embedded silences, psychological dislocations, and polyphony. Finally, the "unfinalized" presented at the novel's conclusion shatters the enclosure of historical determinism, reshaping a continuous and creative subjectivity for marginalized women. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of gender politics and narrative innovations in modern Arabic fiction.

RIGHTEOUS SELF, PROVOCATIVE OTHERS: CHINA-ALIGNED X USERS AND THE DIGITAL CONSTRUCTION OF STATE IDENTITY IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA DISPUTES

Yang Hu, Pei Soo Ang — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0800

The South China Sea (SCS) disputes are among the world’s most complex sovereignty contests. While substantial research has investigated the discourse of political elites and mass media, ordinary users’ discursive representations of the states involved in the disputes remain underexplored. This study centres on networked publics aligned with China’s stance to examine how they discursively construct and negotiate the role identities of China, co-claimant countries and extra-regional states, and how these identity constructions are mobilised to legitimise China’s claims and actions in the SCS disputes. The study integrates discourse-centred online ethnography, Social Media Critical Discourse Studies (SM-CDS) and the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) to analyse 312 posts tagged with #SouthChinaSea on X between September 2023 and July 2024. The findings show that these users construct a morally polarised identity constellation in which China is represented as a righteous, victimised and defensive Self, while co-claimant countries and extra-regional states, particularly the Philippines and the United States, are represented as provocative, dependent, interventionist or destabilising Others. It contributes to research on digital political communication by showing how state identity, geopolitical legitimacy and digitally mediated nationalist discourse are co-constructed in online public debates over maritime disputes.