CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
This chapter presents the
background of the study,the statement of problem, objectives of study, scope and
limitation of the study, significance of the study and the definition of key terms.
1.1 Background of the Study Woman as defined by Hornby (1995:1372), in
Oxford Advance Learner’s Dictionary, is
adult female human being. The term woman is usually reserved for an adult, with the term girl being the usual
term for a female child or adolescent, whereas
man is adult male human being or male person with the qualities of strength, courage etc.
From the definition above we can
say that man and woman are two different
creatures. As human beings, women have their own characteristics which men do not have. Man and woman have different
features which make them different in
several aspects. Physical appearances and voice qualities are two things of women and men differences which can
be seen clearly. Mills (1995:197) said
that the important difference between men and women speech lies in their vocal track resonance. Since male’s vocal
tract tend to be larger than female’s vocal
tract. According to Elgin (1993:63), one clear example which differentiates men and women is that women tend to pitch
their voices higher than men and strike
against them in almost every language interaction whereas men have lower tone in their speaking.
2 Lately some sociolinguists have found other
features which reflect the differences
between women and men. They found that men and women have different ways of speaking. Men and women have
different language features although
they speak the same language. Otto Jespersen (1922) found that there are several aspects of language difference between
men and women. Those aspects are the
difference in the choice of word, vocabulary and grammar used. It is explained that sometime in a conversation
there is possibility that men and women might
not understand each other.
Men and women in Japan use
different language. The differences in the way men and women use language have been detected
in children as young as three years old.
The Japanese language constrains speakers to signal hierarchical social relations in a variety in their utterances,
not only when using second person pronouns
or other address forms. Such differences are sometimes called "gendered language." In Japan women
are less conservative than men, in their pronunciations or in the selection of the
words andexpressions. In Japanese speech
patterns which peculiar to women are sometimes referred to as onna kotoba"women's words" or
joseigo"women's language (Otto Jespersen as cited in Cameron 1990:207). The Japanese language is
unusualamong major language in the high
degree to which the speech of women seen collectively differs from that of men.
If a man in Japan uses feminine
speech, he might beconsidered as homosexual
or effeminate, but his utterances would not be considered as incorrect grammatically. In general, the words and
speech patterns considered masculine 3 are also seen as rough or vulgar while the
femininewords and patterns make a sentence
more polite, more deferential, or softer. For example, women tend to use word watashi oratashi and men like to say
bokuto say Ior me.
Robin Tolmach Lakoff (1975), a
professor of linguistics at University of California, Berkeley, published ten basic
assumptions about what she felt constituted
a special women's language. Lakoff's writings have become the basis for much researches on the subject of women's
language. She says that women have the
complicated place in language, because they are required to speak like a Lady, means gently and politely. Women’s
language shows their powerlessness and
weakness. If they refuse to speak like a Lady, they will be ridiculed as unfeminine, but if they speak politely and
gently, they will be called as people who
cannot speak about serious problem and think clearly (cited in Cameron, 1990:222) Lakoff also said that girls and boys literally
learn different languages as they grow
up. Actually boys and girls first learn ‘women’s language’as their first language. As they grow, boys emerge from their
rough talk stage because they have
unlearned and left their original form of expression and adopted new form of expression. Whereas, girls speak gently and
politely because girls retain their old way
of speech.
According to Lakoff (cited in
Cameron, 1990:223-233), men and women have
different speech function. There are ten elements of speech features that women use, as identified by Robin Lakoff.
Those speech features are claimed to be
used more often by women than by men. Lakoff admitted her finding are based 4 on
her intuition and observation. They are considered as representation of women expression of uncertainty and lack of
confidence. Those speech features are lexical
hedges or fillers, tag question, rising intonations on declaratives, ‘empty’ adjectives, specialized vocabularies (precise
colorterms), intensifiers, ‘hypercorrect’
grammar, ‘super polite’ forms, avoidance of strong swear words, and emphatic stress.
Ten types of woman’s speech
features are claimed tobe used more often by women than by 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 others to share
informations. 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 the movie which usually contains conversation between the characters to share
the information as a means 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 may contain
moral and social value which are modified into many kind of ways in order to the audiences can receive it easily.
In addition, there is also a possibility that women’s speech features will appear in
the movie because it reflects the real situation
of society.
5 Sex and the City is one of the examples of
movie. This movie is directed by Michael
Patrick King. It can be categorized as drama movie since it tells about four women dealing with their lives as fourty
year olds in New York City with the complexity
of their life in relation with love. Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha are main characters in this movie.
They are four modern women which live in
New York, as a big city, and have differentjob. In their forty years old, there are many problems related to job, friend
and love, therefore, in this story there
are many surprising things will attract the audience to watch it.
It is an interesting movie because
it contains manyteachable 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 women who
live in New York. However, the main reason why the researcher has chosen this movie because of its language, such as
the dictions and some utterances which
give more data to be analyzed using theory ofwomen’s speech features.
Moreover, the researcher believes
that there are many phenomena of women’s speech features can be found in Sex and the
City movie where the society influences
the choice of the utterance.
The characters used to hedge
their sentences by using some hedges such as well, you know, kinda, I guess etc. For
example, hedge is used by one of character “I thought this auction would be more fun...
but it’s kinda sad”. In addition, there is
also peculiar sentence intonation pattern used only among women. It shows that the speaker cannot make up her mind and not
sure of her self. It appears in the dialogue
spoken by one of character “After the fifteenth?. In addition, there are 6 other
types of women’s speech features found in Sexand the City movie which can be analyzed by using Robin Lakoff’s
theory. We will more realize that studying
about women’s speech features is very important to get more understanding in relation with language and
gender in our society especially about women’s
speech features.
Related to the illustration
above, the researcher wants to analyze and investigate the utterances of this movie,
especially women’s speech features which
are used by the characters of Sex and the City movie. Robin Lakoff’s theory of women’s speech features is chosen
becauseof several reasons.
First reason, this theory is able
to cover women’s speech features phenomena
in relation with the way of women speak in their society. Including the use of hedging, tag question, rising
intonations on declaratives, empty adjectives,
specialized vocabularies (precise colorterms), intensifiers, hypercorrect grammar, super polite forms,
avoidanceof strong swear words, and emphatic
stress.
Meanwhile, the second reason,
Lakoff is the first linguist who has published
ten basic assumptions about what she feltconstituted a special women's language. Lakoff’s writings have become the
basis for much researches on the subject
of women's language and foundation for other sociolinguists for investigating phenomena of language and gender
especially about women’s speech
features. Janet Holmes (1995) has also proposed the theory related to women’s speech features but she just focused
on several aspects which are extracted
from Lakoff’s namely tag question and hedging. It tends to investigate 7 women’s
language from politeness point of view. Otto Jespersen describes woman’s language in widely division including
euphemism, hyperbolic expression, slang
and innovations (Thorne & Henley as cited in Olsson 2000:21).
Therefore, Lakoff’s thought
becomes the most suitable theory because it explains and describes about the division of women’s
speech features completely and specifically.
A study on women’s speech
features has been conducted by some researchers
but in different research method and object of the each study. Cecilia Agustine (2004) has conducted Sociolinguistic
Studyon Women’s Speech Features Used by
the Female VJs of MTV Indonesia. This research is a descriptive quantitative because it is done by
describing the phenomenon found out in
the data then continued with specific conclusion. From the findings, the writer found that both VJ Nirina and VJ Denise
adopted women’s speech features.
The most common feature used by
VJ Nirina and VJ Denise is lexical hedges or fillers. The least features used by VJ Denise
are tag question, superpolite form and avoidance
of strong swear words. The least feature used by Nirina was empty adjectives.
Dian Rosita (2008) studied about
An Analysis of Sexand the City TV Series’s
Dialogue Based on Ten Types of Women's Linguistic Features. She analyzed the dialogue of Sex and the City
drama TV series. It was conducted to find
what types and which types of women’s linguistic features occur most frequently.
8 Dewi (2001) has conducted the research about a
Sociolinguistics Study on Speech
Features of Female Students of Petra Christian University while gossiping in campus. In observing the activity, the
research was conducted by using qualitative
approach because the data are in the form of words and it involves obtaining a holistic picture of what goes on
in particular situation.
Previous studies above explain about several
researchers who have been conducted the
research about women’s speech features. This research has the differences with previous studies. The
previous studies have the different objective
of the study which tends to investigate women’s speech features in determining its type and frequency of
occurrence without giving deep explanation.
The objects used were the transcript of natural conversation between peoples which are recorded. While the present
research uses Lakoff’s theory focus on
ten types women’s speech features and used movieas object of the study. It tries to investigate the phenomena of women’s
speech features in relation with its type
and how it is used in women’s conversations.
1.2 Problem of the Study Based on the background of study, the
statement of the problem in this study
is as follows. How are women’s speech features used by the characters of Sex and the City movie? 1.3 Objective of the Study Based
on the research problem above, the objectiveof this study is to find out how the characters of Sex and the City use
women’s speech features.
9 1.4 Significance of the Study The
result of this research is expected to give contributions as follows: The result of this study is expected to give
practical contribution for the
Sociolinguistics lecturers to be a source and empirical data in teaching about language and gender especially
aboutwomen’s speech features, they can
use this research as the examplehow women’s speech features are used by the characters in
movie. In addition, they also can know
about the use of women’s speech features in movie dialogue.
It is hoped that this research can become a reference for linguistic students to learn more about women’s speech
features. In addition, it is hoped that
the result of this research can give information about Lakoff’s theory of women’s speech features
when they are studying about language
and gender. Practically, they can learn about how women’s speech features are used in women’s
speech in order to know their speech
characteristic through movie.
This research is hoped to be able to give contribution and foundation for future research who are interested in
women’s speech features to be analyzed
more deeply. In addition, this research can become comparison for the future research especially
in analyzing women’s speech features.
10 1.5 Scope and Limitation The scope of this research focuses on
Sociolinguistic study especially on the
way women’s speech features used by the main characters of Sex and the City movie based on Robin Lakoff’s theory.
To avoid broadening the
discussion, the researcher limits this research and focuses on ten types of women’s speech
features such as hedging, tag question, rising
intonations on declaratives, empty adjectives, specialized vocabularies (precise color terms), intensifiers,
hypercorrect grammar, super polite forms, avoidance of strong swear words, and emphatic
stress. Women’s speech features are
spoken by four women as the main characters; they are Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha in several settings such
as restaurant, apartment, library, streets
and Mexican resort which cannot be analyzedperfectly.
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