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Zuraidah Mohd Don is Professor at the Department of English Language, Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya, and was Research Fellow at the Department of Linguistics, Lancaster University, United Kingdom and Language Consultant at MIMOS. Her research interests include, Pragmatics, Critical Discourse Analysis, Corpus Linguistics, English Language Teaching and Prosody. Her current research includes a project on speech synthesis and recognition, Malay Lexicon (MALEX), Malaysian Corpus of Learner English (MACLE), Corpus of Spoken English (COMEL) and language, power and ideology. She has taught English Language and linguistics for more than twenty years and has completed two research projects on English language proficiency of university students and academic staff for the Ministry of Higher Education..
She has published in international refereed journals and her recent publications include two co-authored books entitled Malay Word Class: A corpus-based Approach and Malay Adverbs: Problems and Solutions and two edited books entitled English in a Globalised Environment: Investigating an Emerging variety of English and Enhancing the quality of higher Education through Research: Shaping Future Policy. She is currently editing a book entitled Language Learning and Teaching in a Multi-cultural Context: Pedagogy and Research in Malaysia. Her recent articles have been accepted for publication in international refereed journal such as Journal of Pragmatics, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, Linguistics Journal, Multilingua and International Journal of Corpus Linguistics

Ideology and intercultural commucation: The world in conflict
The 20 th century saw more than its share of wars, and organised interethnic, interreligious and intercultural hatred. We have just celebrated our ninth year into the 21 st century, and yet the old problem of how to unite a world divided on ethnic and religious lines remains in sharp focus. The divisions are brought about not only by differences of religious or ideological conviction, but also – and perhaps more importantly – by the manner in which these differences are communicated.. What we face is not just a military problem, but also a problem of intercultural communication. As Hu Xin (2007) argues “we are more prone to explain our own negative actions and those of our friends in terms of situational factors while attributing those of opponents to hostile motives”. Where culture is concerned, nothing apparently is learned from history. In order to make the world safe again, it is essential to understand ourselves as well as others, and to understand how we relate to each other as well as how other groups relate among themselves. It is important not to concentrate only on the things that divide us, but to pay attention also to the things that bring us together; and we have to learn to acknowledge in a spirit of toleration how other groups differ from our own. This paper seeks to fill this gap in intercultural communication and to contribute to a larger understanding of international and intercultural relations by directing attention towards the relationships between two conflicting groups, namely America and the Other. The data that forms the basis of the analysis includes extracts from selected political speeches. The extracts are subjected to linguistic analysis using a framework derived from Critical Discourse Analysis in order to illustrate how rhetorical structure and expressions of attitude and evaluation are used in order to promote global understanding and unity in a context of cultural diversity.

Plenary Speaker

Zuraidah Mohd Don is Professor at the Department of English Language, Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya, and was Research Fellow at the Department of Linguistics, Lancaster University, United Kingdom and Language Consultant at MIMOS. Her research interests include, Pragmatics, Critical Discourse Analysis, Corpus Linguistics, English Language Teaching and Prosody. Her current research includes a project on speech synthesis and recognition, Malay Lexicon (MALEX), Malaysian Corpus of Learner English (MACLE), Corpus of Spoken English (COMEL) and language, power and ideology. She has taught English Language and linguistics for more than twenty years and has completed two research projects on English language proficiency of university students and academic staff for the Ministry of Higher Education..

She has published in international refereed journals and her recent publications include two co-authored books entitled Malay Word Class: A corpus-based Approach and Malay Adverbs: Problems and Solutions and two edited books entitled English in a Globalised Environment: Investigating an Emerging variety of English and Enhancing the quality of higher Education through Research: Shaping Future Policy. She is currently editing a book entitled Language Learning and Teaching in a Multi-cultural Context: Pedagogy and Research in Malaysia. Her recent articles have been accepted for publication in international refereed journal such as Journal of Pragmatics, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, Linguistics Journal, Multilingua and International Journal of Corpus Linguistics

Ideology and intercultural commucation: The world in conflict

The 20 th century saw more than its share of wars, and organised interethnic, interreligious and intercultural hatred. We have just celebrated our ninth year into the 21 st century, and yet the old problem of how to unite a world divided on ethnic and religious lines remains in sharp focus. The divisions are brought about not only by differences of religious or ideological conviction, but also – and perhaps more importantly – by the manner in which these differences are communicated.. What we face is not just a military problem, but also a problem of intercultural communication. As Hu Xin (2007) argues “we are more prone to explain our own negative actions and those of our friends in terms of situational factors while attributing those of opponents to hostile motives”. Where culture is concerned, nothing apparently is learned from history. In order to make the world safe again, it is essential to understand ourselves as well as others, and to understand how we relate to each other as well as how other groups relate among themselves. It is important not to concentrate only on the things that divide us, but to pay attention also to the things that bring us together; and we have to learn to acknowledge in a spirit of toleration how other groups differ from our own. This paper seeks to fill this gap in intercultural communication and to contribute to a larger understanding of international and intercultural relations by directing attention towards the relationships between two conflicting groups, namely America and the Other. The data that forms the basis of the analysis includes extracts from selected political speeches. The extracts are subjected to linguistic analysis using a framework derived from Critical Discourse Analysis in order to illustrate how rhetorical structure and expressions of attitude and evaluation are used in order to promote global understanding and unity in a context of cultural diversity.