THE USE OF SEXIST LANGUAGE IN DAGELAN ACCOUNT
ON INSTAGRAM
A THESIS
Submitted as the Partial Fullfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra
By :
BUNGA SRI RAHAYU
Registration Number 2112220001
ENGLISH AND LITERATURE DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF LANGUAGES AND ARTS
DECLARATION
I have familiarized myself with the University’s policy on Academic
integrity. Except where appropriately acknowledged, this thesis is my own work,
has been expressed in my own words and has not previously been submitted for
assessment.
I understand that this paper may be screened electronically or otherwise
for plagiarism.
Medan, July 2015 The writer
ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Great thanks and praise to the Almighty Allah SWT who has blessed and
given the ability to the writer to complete her thesis as the partial fulfillment of
the requirements for degree of Sarjana Sastra at the English Department, Faculty
of Languages and Arts, State University of Medan.
This thesis would not have been possible without the guidance and the
help of several individuals who always contributed and extended their valuable assistances in the preparation and completion of this thesis. The writer’s special appreciation goes to:
Prof. Dr. H. Syawal Gultom, M.Pd., the Rector of State University of
Medan.
Dr. Isda Pramuniati, M.Hum., the Dean Faculty of Language and Arts,
State University of Medan.
Prof. Dr. Hj. Sumarsih, M.Pd., the Head of English and Literature
Department all at once as her Thesis Examiner, Dra. Meisuri, M.A., the
Secretary of English Department all at once as her Thesis Adviser for
enthusiastic support and guidance through every step of this project, and
for all she has taught the writer.
Syamsul Bahri, S.S., M.Hum., the Head of English Literature Program,
and Nora Ronita, S.Pd., S.S., M.Hum., the Head of English Education
Program, Faculty of Languages and Arts, State University of Medan. Dra. Masitowarni Siregar, M.Ed., Immanuel Prasetya Gintings, S.S.,
M.Hum as her Thesis Examiners.
Rita Hartati, S.S., M.Hum., as the Academic Adviser.
Eis Sri Wahyuni, M.Pd., as the Administration Staff of English
Department for helping the writer in preparing all the fulfillment of this
thesis.
iii
things in facing the life. Thanks also given to her one and only sister Afri
Yanti.
All her beloved friends in English Literature A and B 2011, especially for
Septhia, Rezeki, Sofa, Juni, Maria, Hasbi, Marina, Tri Buana, Sofyan, and others that cannot be mentioned all. Thanks for their
support, kindness, great love and care to the writer, also warm hearted
encouragement friendship in finishing this thesis to the writer.
Her best friends Khalida Tanjung, Dahra, Masriani, Muliani, Martha
Simanjuntak, Dinda, Dwi and Eli, thanks for togetherness and stupid
things, the ups and downs we have been through together.
The people who direct or indirectly contributed in this study, your kindness means a lot to her.
Medan, July 2015
The writer,
i
ABSTRACT
Rahayu, Bunga Sri, 2112220001. The Use of Sexist Language in Dagelan
Account on Instagram. A Thesis, English Department, Faculty of Languages
and Arts, State University of Medan, 2015.
This study deals with the use of sexist language by using ambivalent sexism theory: hostile and benevolent sexism. The writer focuses on Instagram specifically in Dagelan account as the source of data. The objectives of the study were to find out the types and the dominant types of ambivalent sexism are used in Dagelan account and to determine the more prominent gender discussed in Dagelan account. The data that support this study by using descriptive qualitative data by reading some references related to the subject matters. The findings show that hostile sexism ( 24 sentences) and benevolent sexism (26 sentences). The findings also found that male (11 sentences) and female (39 sentences), the more prominent gender discussed in Dagelan account is female in hostile sexism.
Keywords: Sociolinguistics, Language Differences, Sexist Language, Ambivalent
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1) Language that ignores women ... 14
2) Language that defines women narrowly ... 16
3) Language that depreciates woman ... 17
2. Semiotic ... 18
B. Conceptual Framework ... 27
CHAPTER III. RESEARCH METHOD A. Research Design ... 28
B. The Source of the Data ... 28
v
D. The Technique of Analyzing the Data ... 29
CHAPTER IV. DATA AND DATA ANALYSIS A. Data ... 31
B. Data Analysis ... 31
C. Research Findings ... 40
D. Discussions ... 41
CHAPTER V. CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS A. Conclusions ... 43
B. Suggestions ... 44
vii
LIST OF FIGURES
Pages
Figure 2.1 the differences Man’s and Woman’s day... 19
Figure 2.2 the examples of meme ... 24
viii
LIST OF APPENDICES
Pages
A. Table of The Use of Sexist Language in Dagelan Account
1
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. The Background of the Study
In communication, language is used as a tool to convey internal thoughts
and emotions of human beings to interact and socialize in their environment by
communicating each other. Language often changes as time goes by, there were
some factors that make language changes in this modern era, these factors were
environment, education, age, sex and the development of technology at this time.
Every factor could cause the differences by using language particularly by using
language based on sex. Men and women have differences of using language.
Women have words or phrases rarely used by men, for example “gossiping” is a
word that is often used by women when they get together and discuss about
something or someone, this word is very rarely used by men, men prefer to use
word “talking” or “discussing” rather than gossiping, gossiping is related to
women.
The discussion about men and their language or women and their language
used to concern about the different ways using language between men and
women, for example women mostly talk about their personal problems but men
prefer to talk about hot issues that recently occurred such as about the result of
football competition. There are some certain languages concerned to sex, it could
2
Sexist language often occured discrimination towards one gender. The
phenomenon of sexist language can be found in various media such as mass
media, usually there were some beauty products and beverage advertisements
which used sexist language for examples “lelaki minum extra joss,” “saya wanita
Dove and I love it”. The examples of both advertising explicated that the beverage
product just for men so as with the beauty product just for women. The sentence is
one of many examples of sexist language that can be found on advertisements.
Not only on the mass media, but social media also frequently uses sexist language
which represents men and women are not equal. Sexist language used in social
media contained of positive and negative stereotype towards one gender. In
psychology, the theoretical framework discussed about sexist language termed as
ambivalent sexism: hostile and benevolent sexism (Glick and Fiske, 1997), each
type addresses issues of power, gender differentiation, and sexuality.
In this era, the discussion of linguistic is very extensive. Language is not
contained of linguistic field such as semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics,
semiotics and sexist language, depending on our understanding and grouping of
the language. The development of technology today provides a lot of social media
3
Related to this research, Lei (2006) studied about Sexism in language found
that sexist language caused men and women as different status but equal human
beings. He (2010) studied about An analysis of sexism in English found that there
were morphological features and syntactic features of sexism in English and also
the main causes of sexism in English are social economic causes and
socialization.
Greenwood and Isbell (2002) studied about ambivalent sexism and the
dumb blonde, men’s and women’s reactions to sexist jokes found that jokes in
high hostile sexism are more amusing and less offensive than those low in hostile
sexism. Men high in benevolent sexism found the jokes significantly more
amusing and less offensive than either women in the same group or men low in
both hostile and benevolent sexism.
Languages are not only occured verbally, but there are some media related
to linguistics. Just as social media not only used as communication and
entertainment tools, for example Instagram, some people just use Instagram as a
means to post photos and videos. Without the users realized Instagram is related
to linguistics such as sexist language. The writer is interested to use Instagram and
choose one of an account in Instagram such as Dagelan account as a research
object.
Therefore, this study focused on the use of sexist language in Dagelan
account on Instagram. This account uploaded many pictures that have short
sentences or captions in each pictures by using sexist language. The sexist
4
has largely been developed by social psychologists Glick and Fiske (1997) that
divided ambivalent sexism into two sub-components: hostile sexism and
benevolent sexism; Hostile sexism reflects to negative evaluations
and stereotypes toward a gender (e.g., the ideas that women are sensitive and
weak) while benevolent sexism represents positive evaluations of gender (e.g., the
ideas that women need to be protected by men).
B. The Problems of the Study
The problems of the study are formulated as follows:
1. What are the types of ambivalent sexism used in Dagelan account?
2. What is the dominant type of ambivalent sexism found in Dagelan
account?
3. What is the most prominent gender discussed in Dagelan account by
using ambivalent sexism?
C. The Objectives of the Study
Based on the problems above, the objectives of the study are as follows:
1. to find out the types of ambivalent sexism are used in Dagelan account
2. to find out the dominant type of ambivalent sexism found in Dagelan
account.
3. to determine what gender is the most prominent discussed in Dagelan
5
D. The Scope of the Study
The scope of this study is focused on types of ambivalent sexism used in
Dagelan account on Instagram by capturing pictures which have short sentence
and have context related to sexist language. In psychology, Glick and Fiske
(1997) divided ambivalent sexism into hostile and benevolent sexism.
E. The Significance of the Study
The finding of the study is expected to be useful for:
1. Theoretically
This study is expected to provide benefits of knowledge, at least can be
useful as a reference for further study.
2. Practically
a. Students and readers who want to enrich their information and
knowledge about sexist language in others media not only social
media such as Instagram.
b. The researchers who are interested in conducting the similar study to
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CHAPTER V
CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
A. Conclusions
This study deals with sexist language that found on Instagram specifically in
Dagelan account. There were 50 sentences taken from the pictures that have short
sentence or caption related to sexist language. The analysis of the study shows
that :
1. From the types of ambivalent sexism composed into hostile and
benevolent sexism by Glick and Fiske ( 1996, 1997), there were 24
sentences related to hostile sexism and 26 sentences related to benevolent
sexism.
2. The using of benevolent sexism is the most dominant used in Dagelan
account. There were 26 sentences.
3. The most prominent gender discussed in Dagelan account on Instagram
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B. Suggestions
Having seen the results of this study, the writer would like to offer some
suggestion to be considered by those who are interested in studying about sexist
language by using ambivalent sexism theory by Glick and Fiske (1996, 1997) for
further research about it. they are as follows:
1. It is suggested to students of English Department should learn more about
language development in society.
2. It is suggested to other researchers to use ambivalent sexism theory for the
further research to analyze sexist language on the others media.
3. It is suggested for all the readers in order to have more knowledge about the
use of sexist language that is often used and found in daily life because
46
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