This paper explores the interrelationship between culture, language and communication. English language has established a position for itself as a widely spoken language in the world in many aspects of people’s lives regardless of race, creed or religion. Many Islamic specific terms have been borrowed into English as a result of continuous contact between Muslims and English-speaking communities. This study analyzes the semantic change of three commonly used Islamic terms by English speakers in daily life: hijab, halal, Islamist, and their definitions in English dictionaries. It aims to investigate their definitions and explore their associated meanings both in dictionaries and language in use. The definitions of the terms were compared in two reliable English dictionaries, Collins English Dictionary (CED) and Oxford Learner’s Dictionary (OLD). A well-known Arabic dictionary, Al Mu‘jam Alwasıt Dictionary (AAD), was used for reference of the original Arabic meaning. The Intelligent Web corpus (iWeb) was used to provide information on the use of the examined terms in daily language, and the words they collocate with. The study adopts a semantic change framework for data analysis. Findings of the research suggest that all three terms have undergone semantic changes, and their new meanings in English do not include the extra levels of social and religious meanings as in the original Arabic language. In particular, the term Islamist has developed negative connotations. Language in use has a strong influence on connotations associated to culture-specific terms.

Keywords: Islamic terms; Semantic change; Meaning connotations; Cross-culture loanwords

Abdul-Ghafour, A. Q. K. M., Awal, N. M., Zainudin, I. S., and Aladdin, A. (2019). The interplay of Qur'ānic synonymy and polysemy with special reference to Al-asfār and Al-kutub (the Books) and their English translations. 3L: Language, Linguistics, Literature. 25(1). http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/3L-2019-2501-10

Abdurrosyid, A. (2017). The Islamic entries in three major English dictionaries. Insaniyat: Journal of Islam and Humanities. 2(1), 41-49.

http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/insaniyat.v2i1.6588

Agliz, R. (2015). Translation of religious texts: Difficulties and challenges. Arab World English Journal (AWEJ) Special Issue on Translation. 4.

Akidah, M. A. (2013). Phonological and semantic change in language borrowing. International Journal of Education and Research. 1(4), 1-20.

Al-Ajmi, H. & Otaibi, A. (2006). The treatment of terms relating to Islam and the Arab world in English dictionaries. LEXIKOS: African journals online. 16.

https://doi.org/10.5788/16-0-645

Al-Azzam, B. (2005). Certain terms relating to Islamic observances: Their meanings with reference to three translations of the Qur'an and a translation of Hadith. PhD

Thesis, Durham University. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/1775/

Al-Faruqi, I. R. (1995). Toward Islamic English. Herndon: International Institute of Islamic Thought.

Alghamdi, R. S. (2016). Translating religious terms and culture in “The Sealed Nectar”: A model for quality assessment. PhD Thesis, University of Leeds, Leeds.

Al-Mu‘jam Alwasıt. (n.d.). In Almaany.com. Retrieved June 10, 2020, from https://www.almaany.com

Aldahesh, A.Y. (2014). (Un)Translatability of the Quran: A theoretical perspective. International Journal of Linguistics. 6(6), 23-45.

https://doi.org/10.5296/ijl.v6i6.6497

Ali, H. M. B. M. (2007). Islamic terms in contemporary English. English Today. 23(2), 32. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266078407002064

Ali, H. M. B. M. (2009). Islamic terms in English usage. Language in India. 9, 76-102.

Ali, H. M. B. M. (2014). Islamo-English: A variety of English for the Ummah. Research Journal of English Language and Literature. 2(3), 68-75.

Allan, K. & Robinson, A. J. (Eds.). (2011). Current methods in historical semantics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Anwar, F. (2017). Semantic change in language borrowing: The case of Arabic borrowed words in Urdu. Language in India. 17(2), 107-124.

http://languageinindia.com/feb2017/farheenurdusemanticsfinal.pdf

Awan, I. (2016). Virtual Islamophobia: the eight faces of anti-muslim trolls on Twitter. In Awan, I. (Ed.). Islamophobia in Cyberspace: Hate Crimes Go Viral. (pp. 23-

. New York: Routledge.

Baker, M. (2018). In other words: A coursebook on translation (3rd ed.). New York: Routledge.

Baker, P., Gabrielatos, C. & McEnery, T. (2013). Discourse analysis and media attitudes: The representation of Islam in the British press. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

British Broadcast Corporation. (2020). Hijab. Retrieved July 1, 2020 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/beliefs/hijab_1.shtml on July, 2020

Bussman, H. (1996). Dictionary of language and linguistics. London: Routledge.

Collins English dictionary. (n.d.). In collinsdictionary.com. Retrieved June 10, 2020 from http://www.collinsdictionary.com

Cruse, D. A. (2000). Meaning in language: An introduction to semantics and pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Daghoughi, S. & Hashemian, M. (2016). Analysis of culture-specific items and translation strategies applied in translating Jalal Al-Ahmad’s ‘By the Pen’. English

Language Teaching. 9(4), 171-185. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/elt.v9n4p171

Danzaki, M. A. (2015). Semantic change in Arabic loanwords in Hasua. Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Arabic Studies and Islamic Civilization.

http://dx.doi.org/10.20473/mozaik.v19i2.14584

Davies, E. E. (2003). A goblin or a dirty nose? The treatment of culture-specific references in translations of the Harry Potter books. The Translator. 9 (1), 65-100.

https://doi.org/10.1080/13556509.2003.10799146

Davies, M. (2018). The iWeb Corpus. Retrieved June 10, 2020 from https://www.english-corpora.org/iWeb/

Davies, M. & Kim, J. B. (2019). The advantages and challenges of "big data": Insights from the 14 billion word iWeb corpus. Linguistic Research. 36(1), 1-34.

http://dx.doi.org/10.17250/khisli.36.1.201903.001

Dickins, J., Hervey, S. & Higgins, I. (2016). Thinking Arabic translation: A course in translation method: Arabic to English (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.

El-Khattab, D. (2006). Arabic lexicography. In Brown, K. (Ed.), Encyclopedia of language and linguistics. (2nd ed.) (Vol. 13). (pp. 441-443). Oxford: Elsevier.

El-Shiekh, A. & Saleh, M. (2011). Translation versus transliteration of religious terms in contemporary Islamic discourse in western communities. International Journal

of English Linguistics. 1(2), 141-147. http://doi.org/10.5539/ijel.v1n2p141

Farahani, M, V. & Mokhtari, A. (2016). An analysis of cultural specific items in English translation of Hedayat's "Blind Owl" based on domestication vs. foreignization

Dichotomy. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research. 3(4), 308-324. http://www.jallr.com/index.php/JALLR/article/view/371/pdf371

Geeraerts, D. (2015). Lexical semantics. In D.A. Cruse (Ed.). International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (2nd ed.). (pp. 8758–8764).

Ghazala, H. (2002). Tarjamatul mustalahatil Islamiati. Paper presented at the Symposium on the Translation of the Holy Quran. Al-Madinatul Munawwaratu: Kingdom

of Saudi Arabia.

Hanks, P. (2006). Lexicography overview. In Brown, K. (Ed.). Encyclopedia of language and linguistics (2nd ed.). (Vol .13). (pp.113-128). Oxford: Elsevier.

Hanks, P. (2012). How people use words to make meanings: semantic types meet valences. In Boulton, A. & Thomas, J. (Eds.). Input, process and product:

Developments in teaching and language corpora. (pp. 54-69). Brno: Masaryk University Press.

Haspelmath, M. & Tadmor, U. (2009). Loanwords in the world’s languages: A comparative handbook. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Hassan, S. (2016). Islamic religious terms in English-translation vs. transliteration in Ezzeddin Ibrahim and Denys Johnson-Davies' translation of An-Nawawi's Forty

Hadiths. Translation & Interpreting. 8(1), 117-132. http://dx.doi.org/10.12807/ti.108201.2016.a08

Institute of Islamic Information and Education. Retrieved July 1, 2020 from http://www.iiie.net/

Jasper, D. (Ed.). (1993). Translating religious texts: Translation, transgression and interpretation. New York: St Martin's Press.

Julul, A. A., Rahmawati, N. M., Kwary, D. A. & Sartini, N. W. (2019). Semantic adaptations of the Arabic loanwords in the Indonesian language. MOZAIK HUMANIORA.

(2), 135-147.

Kashgary, A. D. (2011). The paradox of translating the untranslatable: Equivalences. non-equivalence in translating from Arabic into English. Journal of King Saud

University–Languages and Translation. 23, 47-57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jksult.2010.03.001

Katamba, F. (2005). English words (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.

Kramer, M. (2003). Coming to terms: Fundamentalists or Islamists? Middle East Quarterly. 10(2), 65-77.

Larson, R. (1988). On the double object construction. Linguistic Inquiry. 19, 335-391.

Liddicoat, A. J. (2009). Communication as culturally contexted practice: A view from intercultural communication. Australian Journal of Linguistics. 29(1), 115-133.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07268600802516400

Leech, G. (1981). Semantics. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

Leskovar, D. M. (2017). Names in literary translation: A case study of English versions of the Slovenian tale Martin Krpan. Acta Neophilologica. 137-152.

https://doi.org/10.4312/an.50.1-2.137-152

Lyons, J. (1995). Linguistics semantics: An introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Miller, R. (2015). Trask’s historical linguistics. New York: Routledge.

Moore, K., Mason, P. & Lewis, J. (2008). Images of Islam in the UK: The representation of British Muslims in the national print news media 2000–2008. Cardiff: Cardiff

University.

Mozaffari, M. (2007). What is Islamism? History and definition of a concept. Totalitarian movements and political religions. 8(1), 17-33.

https://doi.org/10.1080/14690760601121622

Murphy, M. L. (2003). Semantic relations and the lexicon: Antonymy, synonymy and other paradigms. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Newmark, P. (1988). Approaches to translation. Hertfordshire: Prentice Hall.

Newmark, P. (1995). A textbook of translation. London: Phoenix ELT.

Oboler, A. (2016). The normalisation of Islamophobia through social media: Facebook. In Awan, I. (Ed.). Islamophobia in Cyberspace: Hate Crimes Go Viral. (pp. 41-

. New York: Routledge.

Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries. (n.d.). Retrieved June 10, 2020 from https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com

Öztemel, F. & Kurt, M. (2017). Transmission of cultural specific items into English translation of “Dear Shameless Death” by Latife Tekin. International Journal of

Languages, Education and Teaching. 5(1), 302-320. http://doi.org/10.18298/ijlet.1678

Puspita, D. & Yusuf, K. (2020). Sketching the semantic change of Jahanam and Hijrah: A corpus based approach to manuscripts of Arabic-Indonesian Lexicon. Arabi:

Journal of Arabic Studies. 5(1), 1-10. http://dx.doi.org/10.24865/ajas.v5i1.246

Saeed, J. (2015). Semantics. International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences. 21(2), 585-591. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.53079-7

Simbuka, S., Hamied, F. A., Sundayana, W. & Kwary, D. A. (2019). A corpus-based study on the technical vocabulary of Islamic religious studies. Teflin Journal.

(1), 47-71. http://dx.doi.org/10.15639/teflinjournal.v30i1/47-71

Törnberg, A. & Törnberg, P. (2016). Muslims in social media discourse: Combining topic modeling and critical discourse analysis. Discourse, Context & Media. 13,

-142. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2016.04.003

Wakefield, J.C. (2018). Turning English into Cantonese: The semantic change of English loanwords. In Polley J., Poon, V. & Wee, LH. (Eds.). Cultural conflict in Hong

Kong. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7766-1_2

Wright, S. E. & Budin, G. (1997). Handbook of terminology management. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Yahya, Y. (2018). Lexemes mean God in Al-Qur’an and Arabic Gospel: semantic analysis. LISANUDHAD. 5(2), 105-126.

http://dx.doi.org/10.21111/lisanudhad.v5i2.2602

Yulianita, N. G., Nababan, M. & Djatmika, D. (2018). The acceptability of religious terms translation in the ‘Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Islam’. Lingua

Cultura. 12(2), 111-115.http://dx.doi.org/10.21512/lc.v12i2.3999