Analysing structural ambiguities in a Malaysian English newspaper : an X-bar theory approach

Abstract

Newspaper is one of the reliable sources for people to get updated with current news and issues. A comprehensive news content is very crucial to avoid misunderstanding among readers in perceiving the message. A good sentence construction plays an important role to ensure the comprehensiveness of the news content to prevent any language issues like structural ambiguity. Structural ambiguity is a language issue that causes a sentence may produce two possible meanings. This leads to a wrong interpretation among readers towards the news they have read. Thus, this study aims to analyze structural ambiguities found in a Malaysian English newspaper by using the X-bar theory approach. It is purposely to demonstrate the use of X-bar theory in breaking down ambiguous sentences into small units, so that two possible interpretations made could be justified. This qualitative content analysis study involved a two-month period of analysis in which New Straits Times (NST) newspaper articles were analyzed from the 1st December 2020 to 31st January 2021. The result showed that the structural ambiguities found in the newspaper articles were majorly caused by the attachment of the Prepositional Phrase (PP). Besides, the phenomenon of the structural ambiguities can be clearly explained by using the X-bar theory approach because X-bar theory illustrated on how two possible meanings of each ambiguous sentence occurred. The constituent of tree diagrams portrayed the phrase attachments that causes the sentences become ambiguous. To add on, one major factor causing structural ambiguities in the news articles was when the phrase attachments function as an adjunct. This concluded that structural ambiguity is one of the language issues that can be found in the selected NST newspaper articles and it should be taken into account as an assurance of a good quality of newspaper article writing.

Keywords: English Malaysian newspaper, structural ambiguity, X-bar theory, Prepositional Phrase (PP)