An analysis on women’s language used by the main character of “Thirteen” movie

ABSTRACT

Language and gender have always been an interesting issue both in academic field and everyday life, especially when it is claimed that men and women differ in their linguistic behavior. An American linguist, Robin Lakoff, identified a number of linguistic features which she claimed were used more often by women than by men. Moreover, Holmes also said that there are four components that affect the way people in speaking. They are the participants, the setting or social context in the interaction, the topic, and the function. Yet do all women stereotypically speak this way?

This phenomenon can be found in the dialogues that are uttered by the main character of “Thirteen” movie. This research investigates how women’s language is used by the character of “Thirteen” movie related to the types of women’s language and how does the characteristics of women’s language of “Thirteen” movie.

Because the main character of this series is female, the writer decided to analyze the use of the women's language that are uttered by the the main character of Thirteen movie using Lakoff's theory. The data were taken by finding the transcript of the internet. Then, the data were analyzed by identifying and classifying the types of women's language defined by Lakoff and support by using Holmes’s theory by using participants as one component in affecting language.

The results show that not all types of women's linguistic features occur in the dialogues. There are only seven types of women's linguistic features occur in the dialogues, they are lexical emphatic stress, intensifiers, empty adjective, tag question, super polite form, lexical hedges, and rising intonation. Moreover, women also uses strong swear words to express her emotion when she anger based on the context. Three features which did not occur in the dialogues are specialized vocabularies, hypercorrect grammar, and avoidance of strong swear words. In conclusion, women's language that used by the main character is affected by the social and education background. Hopefully, this research can be further continued by other researcher by using different approach. Further research can investigate women’s language phenomena by using other approach such as the dynamic approach which sees there is an emphasis on dynamic aspects of interaction that take a social perspective.