UNDERSTANDING THE MALAY THOUGHTS THROUGH THE LEXICAL MEANING OF DARAH IN PROVERBS

Scrutinizing the Malay thoughts through various sources, such as proverbs is interesting as one can understand arrays of embedded values and philosophies of the Malay society. What is intriguing about proverbs is that their significance can only be comprehended by understanding the underlying meaning, and the meaning in turn can only be comprehended if one understands the essence of signs or symbols used in a particular proverb. Based on this premise, the study aims to explain the Malay thought s framed by the meaning of darah (blood), which is normally found in the Malay proverbs. Through the sub corpus of the proverbial data from www.malaycivilization.com/, 116 proverbs with reference to darah were obtained and classified into several categories based on cognitive principals. The analysis demonstrates that the Malay society is very creative in forming the meaning of darah, ranging from the meaning associated with the domain of [liquidity] which further assigns darah into two categories of general (darah as blood) and specific (darah representing disease and colour), which bring forth the domain of [feeling] and [attitude]. The varying domain does not only prove the creativity of the Malays linguistically, rather it exhibits the subtlety, meticulousness as well as the common sense of the society in language use.