CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the study
Discussing about language, communication and language has a close relationship because language has a function for communicating with each other by expressing ideas and opinions on different topics. Using language for communication allows people to express their opinions and criticisms creatively.
Meanwhile, communication has meaning. It is a kind of receiving information by interpreting the same meaning in the context of the situation from several expressions, it will become a characteristic of each (Erlangga, 2020). Then the language itself is associated with females and males, which belong to gender. On the other hand, "gender is a social construct that concludes behaviors, norms and roles with being man, and woman, girl, or boy, and comes naturally from human beliefs, and desires, and actions” (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 2003, p. 9) we can conclude there is a close relationship between language and gender in communication, especially in CMC (Computer-Mediated Communication) according to (Androutsopoulos, 2014, p. 75) “CMC also are recent areas of sociolinguistics that covers private and public communication via digital media, such as e-mail, texting, forum discussion, social media, and networking sites and
". Meanwhile, in social media, communication cannot separate from gender, which is male and female, which becomes analysis in this study.
Gender also differentiates the language style in daily conversation by direct and indirect. Direct here means face-to-face interaction in communication. An example of direct communication is speech. However, indirect means language used as media communication by more than two people and occur not face to face. Types of indirect communication are writing. Therefore, communication is a process of conveying a thought, meaning, or message from the sender to the recipient to achieve unity and common understanding. In conversation, not only in real life, but also on the internet in the field of CMC (computer-mediated communication) CMC is a technology in the modern era, 21st century is a century in which technology is inseparable in every aspect of life. It helps people socialize, shop, bank, study and more. (Oktaviani & Desiarti, 2019)
The study of language that has a close relationship to society is called sociolinguistics because the differences in the language use of people can be explain in the field of sociolinguistics in term language variations. One of the variations is kind of language style. Therefore, style is one of the variations used by people in the way they speak in every situation and represent their personalities by using language. This study is language style in the form of writing, because every person has their style of language. This study fills the research gap on the sociolinguistic approach toward language style use on social media in communication on the Instagram using theory proposed by Lakoff and supported by general communication on internet CMC. In communication, language is connected to one of the social aspects, which is gender, as the main topic which will be discussed in this study. The study of communication between genders has been an interesting topic in the modern era. Because one of the important issues
between men and women is the way they use their language for communication what features to interact with each other. Also, in online communication, there are still doubts whether the communication style with those features is real as in real- life, and is it true that the style of women's language can be categorized as what Lakoff said in her theory, as from the results of this analysis the writer can make a conclusion by the phenomena and this analysis also focuses on written expressions. The writer can describe language features of males and females. This study also discusses the relationship between language and gender. Because, Linguistics study, Language features such as vocabulary, grammar, and text structure must be present clearly analyzed (Eklesia & Rido, 2020)
The language used by gender can describe how males and females behave and interact with on social media by applying their language into sentences in the form of text. Sometimes the significant difference between both genders is usually females show themselves to be more supportive, polite, and expressive. That’s why they use such kinds of characteristics in their languages. Based on Lakoff's theory, she mentions women's language features, which is defined as the language used by women only. Meanwhile, communication can be done all the time quickly, and people can easily exchange information and news by using social media much benefit of the use social media, another point is that the use of social media has increased students' interest in research, increased participation and higher completion rates. (Sari & Wahyudin, 2019) Therefore, language in communication has a significant impact in every new era. There are many discoveries especially in internet technology innovation. For eamples of its
development, such as the existence of several applications such as Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram. Those applications are the example of CMC.
The data of this analysis from Instagram, the writer collected data from 9GAG account and focuses on 2 posts and looked for the comments from females and males as the data. The writer chose 9GAG, to get the data because 9GAG has become one of the most popular accounts on Instagram and using English, that’s the reason the writer chose the 9GAG account as the source data. According to (Berlinda, 2017) “English has become a primary language used by international society, spoken by millions of people and English is used in many fields." second, all of the contents are very interesting, and they also share show viral phenomena and contain some ideas through words and some memes show sarcasm, insult a particular group, including some quotes, etc. People not only see the content and write comments in the comment section, they can give so many comments about their ideas, their agreements, or disagreements about the content, whether they are male or female.
The writer studied the content of selected comments, because according to (Harared & Hadi, 2020) " netizens were creative in expressing their ideas through the written. " this triggered the writer to make this analysis.
Communication can be done and goes differently if we compare real life and online communication, which is common knowledge. Females in real life, especially in the field of leadership, often make their positions lower than men and sometimes create stereotypes where women cannot take on higher roles, especially in management positions. (Merchant, 2012). But, in social media, the writer assumes that females are better at expressing something than males.
That's why both genders are different in communication with characteristics between them because "the biggest difference between males and females and their style of communication boils down to the fact that men and women view the purpose of conversation with different perseption" (Merchant, K. 2012 p18).
Overall, women are more expressive, tentative, and polite in conversation (Basow & Ruben Field, 2003 in Merchant, K 2012). Based on those statements, the writer analyzes language features in kinds of CMC that can differ from female and male communication in social media. Therefore, in this study, leaving comments will clarify which style of function distinguishes females and males from the way they express their opinions about memes. Later, it can be seen whether females have their style based on what Lakoff says. Through comments, or males also have a style like that to respond to existing memes.
1.2 Research Question
Based on the background of research above, the writer formulates the research question as follow:
What are the differences in language style used by males and females in commenting on Instagram?
1.3 Research Objective
The objective of this study is to analyze the language styles based on their gender that are classified in the form of written on 9GAG Instagram by identifying what expressions and meaning after comparing them with male language.
Then, the studies prove which gender often uses the feature by applying the theory
chosen, and are there any, similarities, and differences that distinguish the style of their languages. It shows the kind of styles between both genders.
1.4 Use of the Study
1.4.1 Theoretical Uses
Theoretically, this study is expected to be able to give certain knowledge about gender communication style in social media.
1.4.2 Practical Uses
Practically, this study can help another writer who wants to analyze the same topic or another analysis with the same theoretical analysis. It also becomes one of the references for those who are interested in this kind of topic.
1.5 Scope of the Study
This study aims to analyze the different styles of language used by males and females in the comments section in the 9GAG account in Instagram by identifying the features and meaning of each feature of language they use in Instagram using Lakoff’s theory of language features of women's language. Then, this study is aimed at proving the differences and similarities between female and male language styles in social media.
