Social Criticism via Myths and Metaphors: an Ad-hoc Analysis

The traditional Malay works, as a national legacy to symbolize the epitome of quality penmanship by earlier Malay writers, are perceived to be superficial for embracing myths in them. This study, thus, examined the significance of the myths in these selected works. Data related to myths were cited from The Malay Annals and analysis was performed using an ad-hoc concept in the Relevance theory which is a pragmatic theory. The findings of the study suggested that myths are metaphors serving as a social criticism. Guided by an adequate linguistics theory, this study has suggested that myths in the traditional Malay works carry significant meanings. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.