CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
The first chapter discusses the
basic of the research that includes background of the study, problems of the
study, objectives of the study, significances
of the study, scope and limitation, and operational definition of the key terms.
1.1 Background of the Study It is
often claimed that in many societies there are negative stereotypes related to women and language. Here are two
examples of proverbs which are evidence
of this.
A woman‟s tongue
wags like a lamb‟s tail. (English proverb) Onna
sannin yoreba kashimashii. (Japanese proverb) These proverb means that if three
women gather together, it becomes clamorous (Coates: 2004: 9). It implies that many people
stereotypically think women are more
talkative than men. There are other popular assertions of „women‟s language‟ in society. For example, stereotypes such as „women talk more
politely‟ and „women use more
questions‟ have been firmly believed by the public.
Holmes (2001) states that women
tend to be more polite and have less direct
forms or directives. Relative power or status and social distance clearly influence the forms of directives. Moreover,
some linguists have suggested that women
use standard speech form because they are so status-conscious. Women are more aware of the fact that the way they
speak signals their social background
or social status in the community. Standard speech forms are generally associated with high social status,
which makes women use more standards
speech forms as a way of claiming such status. Women a re designed the role of model ling correct behaviors in
the community. Society expec ts women to
speak more correct and standard, that makes women use standard forms in order to protect their “faces”.
The way someone speaks on any one
occasion in fact depends on several factors
other than sex. A woman may speak differently when talk to her mother about clothes than when discuss a problem with
classmates in a university seminar.
Holmes (2001) says that there are four components that affect the way people in speaking. They are the participants
(who are speaking and who are they speaking
to?), the setting or social context in the interaction (where are they speaking?), the topic (what is being talked
about?) and the function (why are they speaking?).
Jespersen‟s work,
Language: It‟s Nature, Development and Origin (1922) has attracted our attention as one of the rare
works which looked at women‟s language in earlier times. In the chapter
entitled „The Woman‟, Jespersen confidently asserts that, for example: Women
speak more politely than men, and have
smaller and less varied vocabularies. Women differ from men in their use of certain adjectives such as „pretty‟ and „nice‟, and adverbs such as „vastly‟ and „so‟. His claim could be interpreted as meaning that women use a different
language than men. Note that his
work is a typical example which treats one group (men) as the norm and the other group (women)
as deviant.
In recent years, linguists have devoted a good
deal of attention to the differences in
the use of language by men and by women. In some languages, such as colloquial American, there is no
striking dialectal difference between the two, but there are distinctive features which
are more likely to be used by one or the
other. Women are generally more polite and deferential, more inclined to pay attention to correct grammar and
pronunciation; men are more likely to use “rough” aspects of speech, such as slang and
profanity. These are only some of the
most obvious distinctions, and they may reflect social stereot ypes as much as they do practice (Francine, 1978: 47-61).
In her pioneering study of the
early 1970s, Language and Woman‟s Place, the linguist Robin Lakoff also echoes
Jespersen in her claim that certain features are typical of women‟s speech:
over politeness, heavily qualified statements, „empty‟ vocabulary
and trivial subject matter. Lakoff maintains that women are forced to learn a weak, trivial and
deferential style as part of their socialization, which is essentially training how to be
subordinate. In other words, she regards women‟s style as
a reflection of their powerlessness and men‟s power of
them. As children, women are
encouraged to be “little ladies”. For example, women are allowed to fuss and complain but only a man
can bellow in rage. Thus a tag question
is also a kind of polite statement, in that it does not force agreement or belief on the addressee (Cameron, 1990: 23,
225, 231).
Ten types of women‟s speech features are claimed to be used more often by women than men in their communication.
Communication can be defined as a device
used by women or men for making connection to each other. It is used for sharing or conveying information among
people. Recently, communication has been
extended to be used by people in the entire of the world. They make conversation and talk to each other to share
information. Conversation, nowadays, cannot
be separated from human‟s life because it becomes the significant
way for exchanging their opinion.
It can be found in many kinds of ways in human‟s daily life. One example is movie which usually
contains conversation between the characters
to share the information as a mean of communication. Movie can be defined as an image of human‟s life where the situation and setting of the conversation reflect to the real social life.
It contains moral and social values which are modified into many kinds of way
in order to the audience can receive it easily.
In addition, there is also possibility that women‟s language
appears in the movie because it
reflects the real situation of society.
Thirteen movie is an interesting
movie because it contains many teachable and valuable messages like women
s friendship and sacrifice. In this movie, the characters try to speak gently because they
are required to be well-disposed as modern
teenage. However, the main reason why the researcher has chosen this movie because of its language, such as diction
and some sentences which give more data
to be analyzed using Lakoff
s and Holmes
‟s theory.
The researcher uses Lakoff
s theory because the theory is able to cover women
‟s language phenomena
in relation with the way of women speak in their society completely and specifically. On the
other hand, Homes
s theory is able to show the social factors that affect the
speaker speaks her utterance. In this research,
the researcher uses one element of social factors, participant, in analyzing the characteristics of women
s language used by the main character.
The researcher uses the
participant aspect only because it is the most influential factor that affects the main character in
using women
s language.
Some university students have
done the study of women‟s language from different perspective. Lenny (2000) studied
about Speech Feature of Markona and Dendong
as She-Males Announcer as Seen through Lakoff‟s Theory
and found that Markona and
Dendong employ almost all women‟s linguistic features. Dewi (2001) has conducted the research about a
Sociolinguistics Study on Speech Features
of Female Students of Petra Christian University while Gossiping in Campus and found there are indeed certain
characteristic of women‟s speech features as seen through their gossip. Then,
Agustine (2004) has conducted Sociolinguistic
Study on Women‟s Speech Features Used by the Female VJs of MTV Indonesia and found both VJ Nirina and VJ
Denise adopted women‟s speech features. Furthermore, Ana (2008)
studied about Vocabulary Reflecting Gender
Bias on Elizabeth: The Golden Age and found vocabulary which reflects gender bias on Elizabeth: The Golden Age is
categorized into two classifications, the
language use and the language function.
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