Conversational style used by the main characters in “Twilight” movie

ABSTRACT

As socialized individuals, we spend much our lives for talking or interacting with other people. Tannen (2005) states that ―when people communicate with others, unwittingly they produce some ways to express and interpret meaning in conversation.‖ In other words, the way of people to convey a message in speaking can also be mentioned as conversational style. Conversational style refers to the basic tools with which people communicate. Anything that is said must be said in some way, and that way is style. In order to understand any word spoken, we need to know how the words are meant; is the speaker joking, scolding, friendly, or rude? We need to know what the other person is trying to do by speaking those words in that way at the time.

This research is focused on the conversational style used by the main characters in ―Twilight‖ movie between Isabella Swan and Edward Cullen. It attempts to investigate the phenomena of conversational style in that movie. The question arises are: (1) What kinds of the conversational style used by the main characters in ―Twilight‖ movie? (2) How are the conversational style produced by them in ―Twilight‖ movie? Therefore, the objective of this research is to describe the conversational style used by the main characters in ―Twilight‖ movie and to describe the process of conversational style produced by them in ―Twilight‖ movie.

The research is descriptive qualitative, the data were the utterances of Isabella Swan and Edward Cullen as the main characters of Twilight movie, which contain of conversational style. They were analyzed inductively through the observation done by the researcher herself. The approach for analyzing the conversational style is based on Deborah Tannen (2005).

The result of this research is the researcher found that both Isabella Swan and Edward Cullen used two kinds of conversational style based on Tannen (2005), they are ―high-involvement‖ style and ―high-considerateness‖ style. Those styles can be identified through certain feature of each style. The use of conversational style which consisting of high-involvement style and high-considerateness style is different in certain situation and context.

As the result of the study, it is suggested to the students of English to learn about the use of the conversational style. Therefore, they can understand the concept and working of conversational style in order to know how language works to create and communicate meaning in interaction. Furthermore, the researcher expects that there will be other researchers who are interested in conducting research about conversational style. There are still many objects that can be observed using conversational theory; such as in debate contest, talk show, or small group discussion. The researcher also suggests other researcher to analyze the use of conversational style related to the social factors. Perhaps, the next researcher can analyze the use of conversational style from other point of view. By considering that, studies on conversational style can be more comprehensive.