In the Malaysian education system, attention is highly paid on reading words. Visual images are often treated as “decoration”, or are dismissed altogether (Kress & Leeuwen, 1996). Many local researchers (Saedah 1990, Bahiyah et al., 2008) have only analysed written texts to see how social practices deemed negative such as gender biasness are reflected in the words (lexical items) and linguistic structures. Currently, no systematic research has been undertaken in Malaysia to analyse visual images in English language school textbooks to study how visual images can reflect gender biasness. This research project addresses gender biasness found in visual images in school textbooks, i.e., the treatment of one gender over the other especially of women and girls. The project adopts three widely used approaches for analyzing visual images; content, socio semiotic and ethno-methodology analyses. This paper will however highlight its preliminary analysis focusing on image analysis based on participation, gender and representational meanings. Its aim is to identify the types of images and the representation of gender biasness and stereotyping found in the textbook. The preliminary findings should expose the sexism and gender biasness in the visual images of a sampled textbook; i.e. an English school textbook that is abound with visual images that sometimes, more so than written texts, can articulate more forcefully social and cultural meanings.

Gender inequality is recognised as an impediment to economic growth and development. In Nigeria, several policies have been enacted to eliminate gender inequality. However, studies show that women are grossly marginalised, exploited, and discriminated against in their socioeconomic life. This paper examines the impact of gender inequality and female labour participation in the Nigerian civil service on the economic growth of Nigeria using mix-methods. First, an estimation of the impact of gender inequality on economic growth using panel data regression, followed by content- and consistency-based analysis that examines the factors responsible for gender inequality and discrimination issues women experience in the Nigerian civil service using content- and consistency-based analysis. The findings suggest that gender inequality negatively impacts economic growth and distorts the pool of human capital available to the Nigerian civil service and recommends the use of education and outsourcing of some employment functions to eliminate it effectively.

Competency in occupational English is crucial among university graduates in Malaysia. Nevertheless, there have been constant concerns regarding the graduates’ need for English communication skills. In order to overcome the challenges and become competent, they need to employ strategies that would assist them to remain relevant and sustainable during their internship. This paper presents the challenges and strategies in workplace English Communication among undergraduate accountant internships. Attempts undertaken by the accounting interns in overcoming the challenges in English language communication during their six-month internship experiences at respective companies in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, are also discussed. The study employed a qualitative research method using face-to-face, semi-structured interviews with five (5) interns from the Faculty of Economics and Management of a public university in Malaysia. Interviews with two managers and a supervisor who were the persons in charge of the interns were also carried out. The interview data was transcribed verbatim and analysed using Braun and Clarke’s six-step thematic analysis. The interns’ data was triangulated with the supervisor and managers’ views and later validated by three independent coders using Cohen’s Kappa Reliability Test. The strategies employed by the accounting interns in overcoming the English language communication challenges included speaking English with non-Malay colleagues, seeking help from the supervisor, consulting colleagues or seniors’ expertise, and reading work-related documents. The implications of the findings focus on university administrators to strengthen the teaching and learning of the English language and help undergraduates improve their communication skills in English are also discussed in this paper.

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Malay was once the lingua franca for the Malay Archipelago region, i.e. the Nusantara sphere and beyond. The Malay had been used widely by traders and seamen as the language of trade and commerce. It illustrates the richness of Malay in its nautical and maritime words throughout the pre-modern era, which indirectly led to the positioning of Malaysia as a maritime nation at that point in time. This paper explores Malay words through investigative evidence of words used in the Malay world's seas, where historically, the peninsula was the focus of trade and commerce for the Nusantara region. An investigation to seek evidence of nautical words was conducted on the Malay glossaries in two historical writings. The primary source of analysis was the Shellabear English Malay Dictionary (1916), with the Malacca Maritime Code of the Malays (Stamford Raffles, 1879) as another source of analysis to supplement the findings on Malay as the maritime language. The dictionary is composed of 614 pages with 7000 Malay words and phrases that had equivalence to English nautical words and an appendix of household, nautical and medical terms, among others. A manual calculation shows that Shellabear had 109 'nautical terms' entries in this English–Malay translated dictionary. The maritime nature of the Malay world in both texts reflects many terms related to seafaring, fishing, trade, and navigation, with a prevalence of different types of boats, fishing equipment, and navigation techniques.   Keywords: Dictionary; Lingua Franca; Malay; Maritime words; Malay seas