CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

This chapter presents background of the study, problems of the study,

objectivesof the study, significances of the study, scope and limitation, research
methodand definition of the key terms.

1.1 Background of the Study

Language is an old topic in Western philosophy, but its importance has
grown. It is not a major issue among the ancients. It begins to take on greater
importance in the seventeenth century, with Hobbes and Lock (Jourdan,
2006:16).Lakoff (1973:46) in her book, Language and Womans Place said that
languages use as much as we use language, as much as our choice of forms of
expression is guided by the thoughts we want to express, to the same extent the
way we feel about the things in the real world governs the way we express
ourselves about these things.
Women are often claimed in many societies there are negative stereotypes
related to women and language. Woman as defined by Hornby (1995:1372), in
Oxford Advance Learners 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 and others.
From the definition above about womenslanguage,it can be said 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 the two things of women and men differences which can be seen
clearly. Mills (1995:197) said that the important difference between men and
womens speech lies in their vocal track resonance since males vocal tract

islarger than females vocal tract. According to Elgin (1993:63), one clear
example which differentiates between 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.
Recently, 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. Lakoff (1975), a professor of linguistics
at University of California, Berkeley, published ten basic assumptions about
womens language. Lakoff's writings have become the basis for many 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. Womens 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).
According to Lakoff (cited in Cameron, 1990:223-233), men and women
have differences in the speech function. Lakoff dividedthe speech function into
ten elements of the language that women use. Those speech features are lexical
hedges or fillers, 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. Those speech features are claimed to be used more often by
women than by men in their conversation.
Communication can be defined as a device used by women or men for
making connection with others. 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. One example is movie which usually contains
conversation between characters who communicate to share information. Movie
can be defined as an image of humans life where the situation and setting of the

conversation reflect to the real social life. In addition, there is also possibility that
womens speech features will appear in the movie because it reflects the real
situation of society.
The interesting matter for the researcher in conducting this research is to
knowhow women use language to tell the view of her opinion. Eat Pray Love
movie is one of the movie that can be used to conduct the research about womens
speech features used by the Lakoffs theory. This movie is directed by Elizabeth
Gilbert. It isa drama movie which tells about a married woman who realizes how
unhappy her marriage really is, and that her life needs to go in a different
direction. After a painful divorce, she takes off on a round-the-world journey to
find herself. In this story there is Indonesian part like Bali that has one of the
places in this movie.
Eat Pray Love is an interesting movie because the movie can be broken
down into three acts (Eat, Pray, and Love). It was more than just one womans
story from the very beginning. A writer, Elizabeth Gilbert, funded her year-long
trip around the world with a publishers advance, and her experienced stays in
Italy, India and Indonesia with the knowledge that they would go into a book, and
hopefully a successful one. However, the main reason why the researcher chooses
this movie because of its language, such as the dictions and some utterances
which give more data to be analyzed using theory of womens speech features.
Moreover, the researcher believes that there are many phenomena of womens
speech features can be found in Eat Pray Love movie where the society
influences the choice of the utterance.
Related to the explanation of how the interesting Eat Pray Love movie
above, the researcher intends to analyze and investigate the womens speech
features which are used by the main characters of Eat Pray Love movie. There
are ten elements of the language that women use, as identified by Robin Lakoff in
1975. It is not because all women use all of this language all of the time, but it is
chosen because so far it can cover about womens speech.

Lakoffs theory of womens speech features is chosen because of several

reasons. The first reason why the researcher uses the theory is that this theory is
able to cover womens speech features in this movie. Including the use of
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.
Then the second reason why the researcher uses the theory is that Lakoff is
the first linguist who has published ten basic assumptions about what she felt
constituted a special womens language. Meanwhile, Holmes (1995) has also
proposed the theory related to womens speech features but she just focused on
several aspects which are extracted from Lakoffs theory, namely tag question
and hedging. It tends to investigate womens language from politeness point of
view. Lakoff's most famous work in Language and Woman's Place was
introduced to the field of Sociolinguistics and it has many ideas about womens
language that are now often common place (although, similarly, many of her
findings are now regarded as, at the very least, outdated). She proposed (Language
and Womans Place) that womens speech can be distinguished from that of men
in a number of ways including tentypes of womens speech features. In addition,
Jespersen (cited in Olsson 2000:21)describes womans language in widely
division including euphemism, hyperbolic expression, slang and innovations
(Olsson, 2000:21). However, Lakoffs thought becomes the most suitable theory
because it explains and describes about the division of womens speech features
completely and specifically.
The researches of womens speech features have been conducted by some
researchers but in different research method and object. The first researcher is
Lenny (2000)who studies about Speech Feature of Markonah and Dandong as
She-Males Announcer as Seenby using Robin Lakoffs theory. In her study, she
found that Markona and Dendong who are naturally males, employ womens
speech features but they did not adopt it.

The second researcher is Dewi (2001) who studies about Speech Features
of Female Students of Petra Christian University while Gossiping in Campus. She
found that the speeches features mainlyused by the students are lexical hedges and
intensifier.
The third researcher is Agustine (2004)who studies about Womens Speech
Features Used by the Female VJs of MTV Indonesia. From the findings, the
researcher found that both VJ Nirina and VJ Denise adopted womens 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 Nirinais
empty adjectives.
The fourth researcher is Rosita (2008) who studies about An Analysis of
Sex and the City TV Series Dialogue Based on Ten Types of Women's Linguistic
Features. The research was conducted to find what types and which types of
womens linguistic features occur most frequently. Moreover, this research used
Lakoffs theory, and the result shows that only nine types of womens speech
features found, while Hypercorrect grammar does not occur in the dialogue.
The fifth researcher is Permatasari (2010)who studies about Womens
Speech Features Used by the Characters of Sex and the City Movie. This
research was conducted to find out how the characters of Sex and the City
movie use womens speech features. It was found that the characters of Sex and
the City movie applied most of womens speech features which reflect
uncertainty and lack of confidence. In addition, not all types of womens speech
features used by four characters. The results show that only eight types of
womens speech features used in the dialogues, they are lexical hedges or fillers,
tag question, rising intonation on declaratives, empty adjectives, intensifiers,
superpolite forms, avoidance of strong swear words, and emphatic stress. Two
kinds of features which are not used by the characters are specialized vocabularies
and hypercorrect grammar. Lexical hedges aremostly used by the four characters,

the use of lexical hedges shows that the speakers are not committed to what she is
saying.
The sixth researcher is Muminin (2010) who studies about An Analysis on
Womens Language Used by the Main Character of Thirteen Movie. In her
research, she found some types of womens language and some other typesthat
avoid not uses by women in daily. Some types that she found about womens
language used by the character of thirteen movie are emphatic stress, intensifier,
empty adjective, tag question, superpolite form, lexical hedges, and rising
intonation. In addition, there is one characteristic that should be avoided by
women but it is used by the character of thirteen movie. It is producing strong
word.
Previous researches above explain about several researchers that have been
conducted about womens speech features. However, this research has the
differences with the previous researches. The object of the present research is a
movie, uses Lakoffs theory. Moreover the discussion is only focused on in which
context the main character of Eat Pray Love movie uses the speech features
based on Lakoffs theory.

1.1 Problems of the Study

Based on the background of the study, the statements of the problem in
this researchare as follows:
1. What are the womens speech features used by the main character of Eat
Pray Love movie?
2. In which context the main character of Eat Pray Love movieuses the
speech features?

1.2 Objectives of the Study

This research has aim to describe how womens speech features are
applied by the main character of Eat Pray Love movie, to be more specific, it
has the following aims:
1. To identify the ways of womens speech features used by the main
character of Eat Pray Love movie.
2. To describe in which context the womens speech features areusedby the
main character of Eat Pray Love movie.

1.3 Significances of the Study

The result of this research is expected to give contributions, both

theoritical and practical constributions.
Theoretically, this research is expected to give contributions or
consideration of Sociolinguistics research, especially onresearchwomens speech
features. The purpose of this research is to contribute a better understanding of
how the womens speech features in various ways.
Practically, this research is expected to be more practical in gender
communication because there are many varieties in womens speech. This
research is also conducted to give benefit and expected to be useful for further
researchers, especially for English Department student who want to analyze
womens speech features and Sociolinguistics lecturers.
For English Department students, it is expected that they can learn about
how speech features are used in womens speech in order to know their speech
characteristic through movie. It is also hoped that this research can become a
reference for linguistic students to learn more about womens speech features.
Providing the result of this research is being an alternative for the Sociolinguistics
lecturers to be a source and empirical data in teaching about language and gender,

especially about womens speech features, they can use this research as the
example of how womens speech features are used by the characters in movie.
However, this research is expected to be able to give contribution and
foundation for future researchers who are interested in womens speech features to
be analyzed more deeply. In addition, this research can become comparison for
the future research especially in analyzing womens speech features. Then they
can also know about the use of womens speech features in movies dialogue.
Besides, it is hoped that the result of this research can give information about
Lakoffs theory of womens speech features when they are studying about
language and gender. Basically, they can learn about how womens speech
features are used in womens speech in order to know their speech characteristic
through movie.
1.4 Scope and Limitation
The scope of this research is a Sociolinguistics study, especially on the
way womens speech features. This research is focused on analyzing the womens
speech features uttered by the main character, namely Elizabeth. The researcher
limitsher research by on focusing the object of the study only in the conversation
uttered by the main character in the movie. This research use Lakoffs theory
(1975) to analyze womens speech features. According to her, there are ten types
of womens speech to analyze the womens speech. Those are 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.
1.5 Research Method
This chapter presents research design, data sources, research instrument,
data collection, and data analysis used throughout this thesis.

1.6. 1 Research Design

The research design of this research uses descriptive qualitativebecause it
aims to describe the data obtained as the researcher was found in the field. This
research was considered as qualitative because it analyzed utterances of the main
character stated in Eat Pray Love movie. Itwas designed to help the researcher
understands people, social and cultural contexts within which they live.
Moreover, this design was chosen because it was intended to describe
womens speech features that were applied in Eat Pray Love movie, especially
on the utterances of the main character in this movie. Based on Lakoffs theory,
there are ten types of womens speech features. Those are lexical hedges or fillers,
tag question, rising intonation on declaratives, empty adjectives, intensifiers,
superpolite forms, avoidance of strong swear words, and emphatic stress.

1.6.2 Data Source

The data source of this research is the transcript of Eat Pray Love movie.
Meanwhile, the data are the words, phrases, clauses and sentences produced by
Elizabeth as the main character of Eat Pray Love movie which reflect ten types
of womens speech features used in selected settings, such as restaurant, office,
beach, apartment and others. The researcher chooses the utterancesproduced by
Elizabeth because they can cover the different types of womens speech features
when she speaks with other characters in certain setting.

1.6.3 Research Instrument

The key instrument of this research isthe researcher herself because it is
impossible to analyze the data directly without any interpretation from the
researcher since the data are in the form of utterance. In addition, the researcher

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herself becomes the research instrument who actively and directly participates in
data collection and data analysis.

1.6.4 Data Collection

In collecting the data, the following steps were done. The first step is that
the researcher watched and understood Eat Pray Love movie. The second step is
that the researcher obtained the movie script from the internet and made it into
hard file. The third step is that the researcher identified the utterances produced by
Elizabeth which is possible to be analyzed by using Robin Lakoffs theory of
womens speech features. The last step is that the researcher arranged the data
obtained to make sure that all of utterances produced by Elizabeth in Eat Pray
Love movie had been submitted.

1.6.5 Data Analysis

In analyzing the womens speech features used by the main character of
Eat Pray Love movie, some steps were done. The first step is that the researcher
classified the utterance into ten types of womens speech features, they are lexical
hedges or fillers, 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. The
second step is that the researcher looked for and explained the context of the
utterance to know what the womens speech features used by the main character
of Eat Pray Love movie, and the data are words, phrases, clauses or sentences
from the dialogue spoken by the main character namely Elizabeth in her speaking.
The third step is that the researcher analyzed the utterance based on the
categorization, including explaining the functional usage, the meaning of the
utterance the factor behind the use of those utterances based on the theory of
womens speech features proposed by Robin Lakoff. The last step is that the

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researcher concluded the result of the data analysis to answer the research
problems.

1.6.6 Triangulation
This research used triangulation to confirm the methodology and findings.
In triangulation, it was needed to confirm the data source, previous researchers,
theories, methodology and expert. The researcher used triangulation to obtain the
reliability of the data. The first step is the researcher compared between the movie
and transcript of the movie. The second step is the researcher rechecked the data
by asking assistance from expert. He is Drs. H. Djoko Susanto, M.Ed, Ph.D. as the
lecturer of sociolinguistics can be an informant who has competence, in the
process of triangulation to reach the validity of the findings.

1.7 Definition of the Key Terms

This part presents about the definition of the key terms in this research.
1. Womens speech features: several aspects of speech difference between
women and men which indicate the characteristic of womens speech that
reflect uncertainty and lack of confidence, as identified by Robin Lakoff,
which include 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.This thesis focuses on analyzing
womens speech features used by the main character of Eat Pray Love
movie. This research has aim to identify the ways and to describe in which
context the womens speech features are used by the main character of
Eat Pray Love movie.

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2. Womens language: a language that signifies the characteristics of women,

such as avoiding direct and forceful statements, and relying on conforms
that conveys hesitation and uncertainty.
3. Eat Pray Love movie : The Movie can be broken down into three acts (Eat,
Pray, and Love). This movie was made since 2010. Directed by Ryan
Murphy. Produced by Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Julia
Roberts, Stan Wlodkowski, Tabrez Noorani. Written by Ryan Murphy,
Jennifer Salt (screenplay) Elizabeth Gilbert (novel) Starring Julia Roberts,
Billy Crudup, James Franco, Javier Bardem, Viola Davis, Richard Jenkins,
Christine Hakim, Hadi Subiyanto, Sophie Thompson, El Hadji Diouf,
David Lyons, Tuva Novotny. Music by Dario Marianelli Cinematography
Robert Richardson. Editing by Bradley Buecker Studio Plan B
Entertainment. Distributed by Columbia Pictures. Running time 133
minutes Country United States Language English, Italian, Hindi,
Indonesian.

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