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Enriching Quality and Providing Affordable Education through New Academia | 131 their discourse understanding takes big role in receiving and interpretating the teacher’s discourse. Howarth (2000) defines discourses are linguistic units composed of several utterances in conversation, arguments or speeches. sWhile Talbot (1995) explains discourses in two ways. The first is as the broad stretch of spoken or written language and the second is as linguistic and paralinguistic interaction between people in a specific context. To be more specific, Mills (1997) regards discourse as a vehicle to convey ideology in a covert manner.
Gender
In the last two decades of gender studies, it has been an issue that gender is a complex issue, the unifying theme of which is the idea that gender, unlike sex, is a continuous variable.
Sex is the term that refer to biological context. It refers to biological and cultural aspects of reproductive status, it is a biological determinant. While gender has wider definition. It concerns with the quality. It describes culture and identity carrying with it psychological and sociological implications. According to Graddol & Swann (1989), Simon de Beauvoir’s book The Second Sex captures the essential characteristic of gender: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”. They (1989:3)also argue that gender is a socially rather than a biologically constructed attribute – people are not born with but rather learn the behaviours and attitudes appropriate to their sex. West & Zimmermann (1987:126-127) expound the view that gender
“is a routine, methodical, and recurring accomplishment” and that it is “the activity of managing situated conduct in light of normative conceptions of attitudes and activities appropriate for one’s sex category”. Taking over Austin’s term ‘performativity’ from philosophy of language, Butler (1999) expands its meaning from speech acts to all social acts performed by men and women. She defines gender as the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a rigid regulatory frame which congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance of a “ natural” kind of being.
In summary, in the last two decades of gender studies, it has been made apparent that gender is a complex category, the unifying theme of which is the idea that gender, unlike sex, is a continuous variable (Graddol & Swann,1989: 8).Therefore, an individual can be more or less ‘feminine’ or more or less ‘masculine’, depending on the context in which they are ‘doing’
gender. In the teaching situation, it is apparent that teachers are constantly renegotiating/reconstructing their roles in the context of the classroom through their teaching activities and discourse, performing their roles through particular discourse features. To take Coates (1998) example of woman who ‘perform’ various types of femininity, the current study looks at the specific context of the classroom and the teaching activity in particular, to determine the negotiation and performance of ‘selves’ through discourse.
Men Women Language Use
As has been said in the introduction, male and female use language differently. It can be seen from their language use, whether it is seen from the frequency of male female’s discourse, the language style, the aim of their discourse and the like. Tannen (1990) summarizes six contrasts of men women langauge use. Those are follows.
Status vs Support
Men use language to achieve the upper hand or to prevent others from dominating them. Whereas women use language to gain confirmation and support for their ideas. Men see the world as a place where people try to gain status and keep it but women seek the world as a network coonection seeking of support and consensus.
Independence vs Intimacy
Women use language to show closeness, support and struggle to preserve intimacy.
Men tend to focus on status and more independence. These different point of views certainly bring women and men different belief to the world.
Advice vs Understanding
Men response to a discourse as a problem to solve whereas actually women’s discourse merely to ask for understandings.
Enriching Quality and Providing Affordable Education through New Academia | 132 Information vs Feelings
Men use language to ask and give information while women use language to express their feeelings.
Orders vs Proposal
While men’s discourse is in the form of direct order, women’s discourse tend to be a proposal.
Conflict vs Compromise
In handling unwanted situation, men use language to resist it vocally while women will complaint subsequently but will compromise with the situation. To be more precise, Robin Lakof (1975) made some claims on women’s language use:
1. Hedge: using phrases like “sort of”, “kind of”, “it seems like” and the like.
2. Use polite form: “Would you mind...”, “I’d appreciate it if ...”, 3. Use tag questions: “You would go dinner, aren’t you?”
4. Speak in italics: intonational emphasis equal to underlining words- so, very, quite 5. Use empty adjectives: divine, lovely, adorable and the like.
6. Use hypercorrect grammar and pronunciation: Engllish prestige grammar and clear enunciation.
7. Use direct quotation: men paraphrase more
8. Have a special lexicon: women use more words for things like color, men for sports 9. Use question intonation in declarative sentences
10. Speak less frequently
11. Overuse qualifiers (for example: I think that ...) 12. Apologize more
13. Use modal constructions
14. Avoid coarse language or expletives 15. Use indirect commands and request 16. Use more intensifier
17. Lack a sense of humour
Research Methodology
This part is concerned with the research method to explore classroom discourse. In what follows, the author will state the research question of the present research, then presents the participant of the research and the instrument that will be used for collecting the data of this research. Finally the author will describe and analyze the data in order to draw coclusion of the research.
Research Questions
This research focuses on these following questions: (1) Which students take more active participation and bigger portion in the classroom discourse? (2) What are the aim of male students’ discourse in the classroom? (3) What are the aim of female students’ discourse in the classroom?
Participants
Participants in this research are students from three clases from different departments at Yogyakarta Muhammadiyah University. Those three classes consist of twenty five male students and thirty seven female students. The researcher conducted observation of the discourses made by those students during fifteen meetings in the English class. The researcher examines the discourses, categorize it and the results obtained show the different discourse characteristics between male and female students.
The author use purposive sampling to choose three classes that have balance ratio between male and female students. The classes are Economics 7, Agriculture 4 and Accounting 4. All the students have the same background that is Bahasa Indonesia. The participating students are 35 male students and thirty seven female students from different major which are
Enriching Quality and Providing Affordable Education through New Academia | 133 Economics, Agriculture and Accounting. Economics and Agriculture classes are in their first semester while Accounting class in a third semester class.
Instruments
Audio recording and classroom observation were major instruments for this research. MP3 recorder is used to collect discourse data from the three classes. The English classes of the three classes were audio recorded and transcribed for the data analysis. Besides, in order to make up the potential limitations lyinng wherein, the author attended the three classes, observing the classroom teaching and learning processes. In aiming the validity of the observation, the researcher asks her colleague to be the second observer. Both observers did not intervene the natural classroom teaching and learninng processes and the verbal behavior of the teacher and students. They just observed the classroom discourse and took field notes to facilitate the data transcription and analysis.
Data Collection
The data were collected over a span of roughly five weeks from mid of August to the beginning of September in 2016. Each classes was audio- recorded and observed five times.
The textbook for the students is Integrated English Learning module range from Basic English level, First level and Second level. The teacher were informed of the author’s research, but not of the purpose of the research. The lessons were not specially prepared for the research and all the lessons were recorded under a natural classroom environment. Through the time of five weeks, enough data were obtained based on classroom observation and audio recording of classroom discourse.
Research Procedure
After the investigation, all the discourses of the teacher and the students were transcribed and calculated. The process of data collecting, transcribing and calculating are done in a carefull way to avoid misinterpretation. All the terms ( of five times of audio- recording of each class) concerning the above aspect were counted to get the mean and average percentages of the items for each class. The means and average percentages of the items of the three classes were finally calculated and analyzed.
Research Results and Discussion
Male versus Female Students Participation in the Classroom Discourse
Previous research that has been conducted by other researcher showed that male students took bigger portion and more active in the classroom. It may be related to the old condition where female are rarrely given opportunities for education. Whereas, the researcher that conduct the research in nowadays condition finds out that female students take more active participation and bigger portion in the classroom discourse. The result obtained of the research can be seen in Table 1 below.
Enriching Quality and Providing Affordable Education through New Academia | 134 Table 1 The Use of Discourse of Male and Female Students in the Classroom
Male student Female student
Participation 40, 35 % 59,65 %
The aim of language use
Status 64, 23% 35, 77%
Support 32, 36 % 67, 64 %
Indepedency 57, 67 % 42, 33%
Intimacy 29, 76% 70, 24%
Advice 47, 84% 52, 16%
Understanding 48, 25% 51, 75%
Information 55, 60% 44, 40%
Feelings 37, 65% 62, 35%
Order 63, 57% 36, 43%
Proposal 30, 21% 69, 79%
Conflict 64, 23% 35, 77%
Compromise 32, 36% 67, 64%
Regarding to the above table, it can be said that female students takes more active participation in the classroom. They also takes bigger portion in the classroom discourse. Even, the difference ration between male and female students is not far but it can be said as significant difference though. From the all cumulative data obtained from the observation, male students take 40, 35% from all the data, whereas the female students take 59, 65%. This finding is quite surprising since the number of male and female students are close ( male : 35 students
; female : 37 students). Moreover, previous researchs showed that male students were more active in class participation and took bigger portion in the classroom discourse.
The Aim of Male Students’ Language Use
Based on Tannen (1991) explanation of six contrasts between male and female’s language use, there are six characteristics that differ their use of language. Male students’
discourse are indicated by the notion of status, indepedency, information, order and conflict.
By those indicators, it can be said that male students tend to have discourse in the aim to gain atention, the discourse is mostly informal and humourous, and sometimes out of the context of discussed topics.
The Aim of Female Students’ Language Use
In line with the framework theory from Tannen (1991), female students’ discourse are indicated by the notion of support, intimacy, advice, understanding, feelings, proposal and compromise. Female students tend to use discourse to confirm and make sure of their ideas.
This can be seen from female students’ overuse of qualifier when they answer the teacher’s question and raise their ideas.
Conclusion
Male students tend to have discourse in the aim to gain attention, the discourse is mostly informal and humourous, and sometimes out of the context of discussed topics. On the other hand, female students tend use discourse to confirm and make sure of their ideas. This can be seen from female students’ overuse of qualifier when they answer the teacher’s question and raise their ideas. On the contary, the researcher also finds out that female students take more active participation and bigger portion in the classroom discourse. It can be conluded that eventhough female students’ discourse can be said as having less power but it dominates the clasroom discourse.
Compared to previous research, there is a significant different characteristics in number of discourse participation. While in the previous research, female are revealed taking fewer participation, in this research, female students are having bigger participation in the classroom.
Enriching Quality and Providing Affordable Education through New Academia | 135 While the use of discourse, the differences are not clearly seen. Male students still use discourse to gain attention and female students to confirm and make sure of their ideas. Male students’
discourse is also more humourous then female students’. So, teacher in this era needs to give balance portion to both male and female students in classroom discourse and invite female students to the broader use uf their discourse.
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