The emergence of COVID-19 affects the world population in many ways, resulting in its own specialised discourse. In addition to providing a source of data for analysis, this discourse has also led to a rethinking of multifarious research methods. This section presents a series of articles by scholars from different parts of the world with macro- and micro-linguistic perspectives, ranging from corpus-based analysis to content analysis studies. At the macro level, these scholars explored ways through which government bodies communicate with the public. Official announcements, parliamentary proceedings and COVID-19-related corpora are examined and a comparative textual analysis between the Malaysian and British governments is provided. At the micro level, the scholars analysed selected corpora with lexical, semantic, and discourse foci and personal posts of short narratives and photos to encapsulate meanings from human life and experience. The main takeaway from these studies is the application of a wide range of methods for different focus and perspectives that may be customised to the researcher's unique context.

Within contemporary culture, resistance among youth remains a scholarly fodder. Portrayal of youth's resistance against hegemonic, elitist claims can describe such situation. This paper discusses this issue by exploring some of the many female youth voices resisting to government anxieties over youth involvement with modernity as enmeshed in popular TV fiction. Instead of indexing to modernity-related 'transgression' as claimed by some nation-state elitists, the findings indicate female youth resisting these claims by regressing to local, familiar, fragments. This resistance against government-sanctioned voices leads to an understanding of what we will call unconscious Malay psyche. By exploring focus group interviews among female youth, 'windows' to understanding resistance, cultural subjectivities, and youth culture are exposed.

This paper discusses how Malay female youth relate to popular TV fiction Julia, On Dhia, and Adam and Hawa through audience responses. Specifically, it examines how TV fiction allow Malay female viewers to negotiate against complex Malay cultural fabrics. One of the most important findings is that voices by female youth describe intricacies of donning the robe of modern, Malay youth. On one level, these voices surmise and react to cultural and religious taboo. On another level, however, they identify the TV fiction with familiar, localized markers. This paper implies that in their engagement with Western-imposed globalization issues demonstrated in TV fiction, they allow Malay female youth to return to their familiar, cultural, local Malay spaces. It further proposes to understand this engagement with globalization and return to local, cultural routes as unconscious Malay psyche through which these female voices (re)imagine cultural identities, in some cases, by not simply substituting or integrating global and local values. By telling their stories, how some Malay subjects participate in and become involved with social sphere, eventually gesturing to religious, cultural labels are shown.

The fluid realities of youth in postcolonial nation-states can reflect changing and challenging landscapes. Their engagements with environment, for example, are not only elaborated in social, political, and economical contexts, but also generated through values, beliefs, and identities. This article adds to contemporary debates by positing that discussions on postcolonial civic identities have to be accompanied by youth narratives and their considerations on nature, time, and digital world(s) by taking Malaysian youths as examples. Specifically, it attempts to theorize youth civic identity within postcolonial context(s) by scrutinizing personal narratives that are symbiotically yoked with discourses on ecology and technology. Through administering personal narratives at a suburban district in West Peninsular Malaysia, this paper opens 'windows' into what it means for youths to participate in civic projects. Reading these narratives from the lens of growth into citizenship, their wide-ranging experiences in civic affairs can be understood in four ways, namely, recognition, responsibilities, reconciliation, and reciprocity. Two of these emerging themes, recognition and responsibilities, will be discussed in this article. Our attempt at depicting postcolonial civic identity, therefore, is part of a large-scale investigation on civic mindedness that will compel us to reflect on unofficial, continuous accounts of youth reflecting on a sense of belongingness and what the future might bring.

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, popular Malay television fiction has been thriving and gaining popularity. Through staggering online reruns, this sheer popularity broadens the expanse of multifaceted issues. This paper contextualizes popular TV fiction within a space of imperfection, focusing on audience responses to Julia, Adam & Hawa, and About Dhia. Using the lens of democratic habits of mind according to Mezirow: "respect for others, self-respect, willingness to accept responsibility for the common good, willingness to welcome diversity and to approach others with openness," this paper reveals two of the many emerging themes, namely, forgiveness and repentance, which can intensify possibilities for acknowledging human faults, vulnerability, and imperfection between the private/public and self/society. By considering reactions of some of the many popular TV fiction audience, this paper presents unfolding, interactive twenty-first-century insights into what it means to pursue an imperfect duty, whose responsibility could be understood in the sense of forgiveness and repentance.