GENDER CONVERSATIONAL STYLE OF THE
PRESENTERS OF EIGHT ELEVEN TALK SHOW ON METRO
TV
A Thesis
Submitted to the English Applied Linguistics Study Program in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Magister Humaniora
By:
YULIASARI HARAHAP Registration Number: 8116112021
ENGLISH APPLIED LINGUISTICS STUDY PROGRAM
POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL
STATE UNIVERSITY OF MEDAN
MEDAN
ABSTRACT
Harahap, Yuliasari. Gender Conversational Style of The Presenters of Eight Eleven Show on Metro TV. A Thesis. English Applied Linguistics Study Program, Postgraduate School, State University of Medan, 2015.
ABSTRAK
Harahap, Yuliasari. Gender dan gaya percakapan pembawa acara Eight eleven talk show dalam program Metro TV. Sebuah Tesis. Program Studi Linguistik Terapan Bahasa Inggris. Univeritas Negeri Medan, 2015.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First of all, I would like to extend writer’s endless gratitude to Allah SWT who has given me strength to finish this thesis as one of the requirements to gather the Degree of Magister Humaniora.
Another gratitude is honourably given to the writer’s great thesis supervisors Prof. Dr. Sumarsih, M.Pd and Dr. I Wayan Dirgayasa Tangkas, M.Pd for their time spent for guiding the writer in order to result an outstanding scientific writing in the purpose of fulfilling the writer’s requirement for Degree of Magister Humaniora.
The writer also would like to acknowledge Prof. Dr. Busmin Gurning, M.Pd as the head of English Applied Linguistics Study Program and Dr.Sri Minda Murni, M.S as the secretary of English Applied Linguistics Study Program in the State University of Medan for their support in order to encourage the writer in finalizing this thesis.
She would like also to extend most sincere gratitude to her beloved parents H. Zainuddin Harahap and Hj. Rosnani Damanik for giving support, care prayers, love and advice. Their patience, support, care, love, prayers and advice have been spirit to complete this thesis.
The writer also would like to thank her lovely husband Fajar Astriaji for his support, patience, love, prayers and great patience at all times. It would not have been possible for the writer to finish this thesis without his support.
thank to all buddies and persons who have willingly helped the writer till the writer can finish writing this thesis completely and especially to all the staffs at Universitas Muslim Nusantara who have willingly supported and cooperated. The writer concsciously knows that she has a boundary in mentioning all of you, who taken part in her thesis’s completion except her great prayer and wish, may you all succeed.
Finally, the writer is aware of this thesis is far from being perfect. Therefore, she had been high appreciation for all constructive critics for its improvement.
Medan, June 2015
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER II REVIEW OF LITERATURE 2.1 Theoretical Framework ... 8
2.1.1 The Relationship of Gender to Sex and Sexuality ... 9
2.1.2 Gender as activity and relation ... 10
2.1.3 The Characteristics of males and females speech ... 10
2.1.4 Six differences of men and women in communication... 12
2.1.5 Growing up male and female ... 13
2.2 Conversational style ... 15
2.2.1 Turn taking ... 17
2.2.2 The feature of conversational style ... 18
2.2.3 Conversational signal and devices ... 20
2.3 Talk show ... 22
2.3.1 Defining Talk show ... 23
2.3.2 The Characteristic features of talk show... 24
2.3.4 Talk show host ... 27
3.4 Techniques of Data Collection... 33
3.5 The Trustworthiness of the study ... 33
3.6 The Techniques of data analysis………. 37
CHAPTER IV DATA ANALYSIS, FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 4.1 Data Analysis ... 39
4.1.1 The features of conversational style used in Eight eleven talk show ... 40
4.1.1.1 The features of Amount of talk ... 41
4.1.1.2 The features of Interruption ... 48
4.1.1.3 The features of conversation support ... 55
4.1.1.4 The features of Tentativeness ……… 61
4.1.1.5 The features of Compliment... ... 63
4.1.2. The way conversational style are used by male and female presenter are realized in the talk show news ... 65
4.1.3 The reason of male and female presenters use style differently in Eight eleven talk show news ………. 78
4.2 Findings ……….. 82
BAB V CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
5.1 Conclusion ... 86
5.2 Suggestion ... 87
REFERENCES ... 88
ix
LIST OF TABLES
Table 2.1 The characteristics of male’s and female’s language. ... 11
Table 2.2 Six differences of communication between men and women. ... 12
Table 2.3 The characteristics of male and female in socialize life. ... 14
Table 2.4 The features of conversational styles ... 19
Table 3.1 List the selected topics ... 33
Table 3.2 Summary of techniques for establishing Trustworthiness ... 34
Table 4.1 Amount of talk features used by male and female presenters on talk show…… 41
Table 4.2 Interruption features used by male and female presenters………… 48
Table 4.3 Conversation support used by male and female presenters……… . 54
Table 4.4 Tentativeness features by male and female presenters……… 59
Table 4.5 Compliment features used by male and female presenters………… 61
LIST OF APPENDIXES
Appendixes A The transcribes of video part 1 ………87
Appendixes B The transcribes of video part 2 ………94
Appendixes C The transcribes of video part 3………102
Appendixes D The transcribes of video part 4………110
Appendixes E The transcribes of video part 5 ………113
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
1.1.Background of the Study
Communication is one of the central difficulties skill to master in speaking.
However, everybody absolutely communicates along in his life. Communication is the
process of transmitting meaningful symbols between individuals (William in Hikmat,
2010). It refers to the way of reaching others by transmitting ideas, facts, thoughts,
feelings, and values. It means that everybody must have the main control to express
one’s desires, beliefs, attitudes, behavior and in social condition.
There are three significant components in communication. They are the speaker,
listener and the message. It can be inferred that communication is the human activity to
understand the message between the communicator (speaker) and the communicant
(listener) and the result of it is to get the effectiveness of their understanding.
In a communication a speaker and a hearer on the conversation are supposed to
respond each other in their turn and exchange with the needed information that benefit
both of them (Crowley and Mitchell, 1994). By giving the right information, they can
get the message to each other and their communication will be good. But, in fact not all
the speaker’s utterances in the conversation can be understood by the listener well.
Sometimes communication is not always intentional. People who live around us or the
people who get the message will interpret and give the meaning to our symbolic
behavior, but there are no guarantees that we and the people who get the message will
Communication cannot separated by gender identity. Siahaan as quoted by
nurlela and Fatimah which is found in Widyazati (2012:701) defines gender is a term
used as a categorical division of human into male and female. In the way of talking
there is a significant difference found between men and women. As Nurlela and
Fatimah found in Widyazati (2012:702) quotes from Holmes (1994:1) that women and
men have different ways of talking and hence, of realizing and interpreting speech acts.
She points out that women and men use language in a different way because they have
different perceptions of what the language is for.
All of us have different styles of communicating with other people. Our style
depends on a lot of things like where we come from, our educational background, age
and also our gender. Generally, men and women talk differently although there are
varying degrees of masculine and feminine speech characteristic in each of them. But
men and women speak in particular ways mostly because those ways are associated
with their gender. Recently, much less attention has been focused on individual words
used by male and female and more their conversational style.
In line with what Huffaker and Calvert find in their research, Link and Kreuz
(1999:9) also show through the finding of their research that male used more non literal
language in descriptions of others’ emotion towards the negative emotions than positive
one, while females used more in descriptions of their own emotions and showed no
difference in describing positive and negative emotions. It indicates that men and
women talk differently because they are raised in something like two different gender.
Men tend to speak up what they are feeling and thinking instead of keeping it by
themselves, while women prefers saving face by not telling the truth of what they are
As the research done by Hannah (1999:153) shows that the results revealed
subtle differences in how men and men responded to the behavior of confederates. In
this study the researcher examined the relative impact of gender and speech style on
conversant speech behavior, female and male confederates were trained to employ a
facilitative or a non facilitative style of speech in interactions with young adults.
Analysis of participants conversations with confederates showed that confederate
speech style, rather than confederate gender was more reliable predictor of participants
speech behavior.
Research done by Matei (2011:217) shows in all the conversations that are
recorded, it is noticed that male talk is dominated by interruptions. If a speaker talk in
narrative, it is very difficult for him to actually finish it without numerous interruptions
which are not aimed at clarifying something of vital importance for ensuing discourse.
In addition, Romaine (1994:81) mentions that a man may talk recklessly of lots
bargains, lots of money, lots of fellows, lots of fun, but a lady may not.
As Matei (2011:218) quotes from Tannen that feminine language is oriented
towards connection and intimacy whereas masculine speech style is mainly focused of
status and independence. As shown by the following dialogue which is taken from
Matei’s research that there are two female students, Madalina (23 years old) and Anda
(21).
1. Mada : What about the guy who entered your room yesterday, was he a
colleague of yours?
2. Anda : Ye:s he: is my buddy, I can say that he’s my buddy and I hired him there
4. Anda : Yeah Yeah. My boss is my boyfriend now (laughing)
5. Mada : OH!
6. Anda : [Ye:ah]
From the example given above, we can see that Anda as a female can not say her
secret about her boyfriend, Anda prefer to saving her face for not telling the
truth differ from male talk as what he is thinking.
Six differences of communication between male and female speakers can be
seen based on the conversation of talk show on Metro TV :
Male participant : Menganggap bahwa penyelamatan hewan ini tidak perlu dan
kami orang-orang yang kurang kerjaan , jadi eee……apa yang harusnya bisa
bekerjasama ini kita jadi agak sulit misalnya disaat kita membutuhkan
…e…lebih cepat sampai kedaratan kita ada motorpun kita mintaaa….e….cantel
supaya ikut beriringan itu kita gak dikasi ketika ada wartawan beberapa oknum
ini dengan senang hati terima….
Male presenter : Jadi misalnya kalo tidak ada wartawan kalian temen-temen
yang…
Male participant : tetap dayung sampai encok… dayung…
In these dialogue male participant is expressed independence, because he
focuses on what he can do, on the other hand male presenter is uttered order for
Male presenter : wow… saking hausnya… mbak, ngomong-ngomong soal… apa
namanya anjing yang sakit setelah banjir… setelah musibah banjir bagaimana
kita cara mengatasinya…
Female participant : tergantung dari apa dulu dia…
Male presenter : ok, misalnya dehidrasi terlebih dahulu
Female participant : Ok, dehidrasi jadi pertama kita gak bias langsung
memberikan air terus menerus ya…gak boleh … gak boleh seperti itu kita harus
bertahap secara sedikit karena e…apa yaaa… kita akan menimbulkan penyakit
yang lainnya lagi karena dia dalam kondisi yang drop.
In these dialogues male presenter is expressed proposal, because he did not
directly go to the point of discussion when he asks for information about
“musibah banjir”, on the other hand female participant is uttered advice, because
she tends to express advice for doing complaint.
From the utterances of male and female presenters and participant above, it can
be conclude that male presenter and male participant is able to communicate by female
strategies, on the other hand female presenters and female participant is able to
communicate by male strategies.
Based on those elaboration above, the writer feels interested in studying this
problem by focuses on conversational style of the presenters of eight eleven show on
Metro TV. In this case the researcher focuses on the features of conversational style are
used male and female presenters in talk show news, to find out how conversational style
are used by male and female presenters delivered in talk show, and why they use
1.2. The Problem of the Study
The Problems of the study must be clearly stated so that the objectives of the
study can be well determined. Based on the background, the problems are formulated as
the follow :
1. What are the features of conversational style used by male and female presenters
in the talk show news?
2. How are conversational style used by male and female presenters realized in the
talk show news?
3. Why do they use different style the way they do?
1.3.The Objective of the Study
Based on the problems of study above, the objectives of study are :
1. To know the features of conversational style used by male and female presenters in
conversation in eight eleven TV show
2. To find out how conversational style used by male and female presenters delivered in
eight eleven TV show.
3. To describe why males and females presenters use differently style in eight eleven
TV show
1.4. The Scope of the Study
This study is limited on the utterances with the features of conversational style
according to Swann (2000:225) are used by male and female presenters in “eight eleven
TV show program on METRO TV. On the other hand, according to Tannen (1992)
versus support, independence versus intimacy, advice versus understanding, information
versus feeling, orders versus proposals and conflict versus compromise. In this case, this
study limited on different ways of communication used by male and female presenters.
1.5The Significances of the Study
The significances of this study is divided in to two, theoretical and practical
significances. Theoretically, it is expected that the findings of the study can give much
contribution to applied linguistics particularly language and gender which can be used
as a reference for the similar studies in the future, especially the studies which discuss
gender conversational style in the talk show.
Practically, it is expected that the findings can be useful for the guiding
information for the reader. And for information and idea for other researcher is who
want to carry out further study on gender conversational style. And also the guidance
for participants is to increase the sensitivity in practicing an effective cooperation and
development to conversational style and sociolinguistics.
CHAPTER V
CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 5.1Conclusions
By referring to the data analysis, findings and discussions which are elaborated in the previous chapter, these following conclusions are drawn:
1. Those five types of feature conversational style was identified and found 5 feature was found successfully from the eight eleven talk show; they are amount of talk , interruption , conversation support, compliment. Based on the data of the features of conversational style used by female presenters are higher in using amount of talk and conversational support than male presenter do in the talk show news. Meanwhile male are higher in using interruption and compliment than female do.
2. The different ways of communication between male and female presenters in Eight eleven talk show program on metro TV conclude that the male presenters are able to communicate by female like strategies. And then vice versa female speakers are able to communicate by male like strategies in this talk show. 3. Male and female presenters are used by style differently in the talk show news, it
5.2 Suggestions
In relation to conclusions which have been state previously, some constructive points are suggested as the following:
1. In relation with the finding in this study, it is suggested to the student who want to study about sociolinguistic branch above all in mastering the characteristics of male and female speakers in making the interaction.
2. It is suggested for other researcher, who want to elaborate the study about gender differences and conversational style in other field.
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