Language Style Used by Characters in Moxie Movie
on
https://ojs.unud.ac.id/index.php/linguistika/
DOI: https://doi.org/10.24843/ling.2023.v30.i02.p07
LINGUISTIKA, SEPTEMBER 2023
p-ISSN: 0854-9613 e-ISSN: 2656-6419
Vol. 30 No.2
Language Style Used by Characters in Moxie Movie
Luh Komang Anggi Waisnawati1, Ni Luh Ketut Mas Indrawati 2, Ketut Artawa3 1,2,3English Department, Faculty of Humanities, Udayana University, Indonesia e-mail: 1[email protected], 2[email protected] 3[email protected]
Abstract—This research discussed the types of language style that are used by the characters in the movie as well as their functions. By knowing the style of language as well as the function of the language, then there will be no misinterpretation between the speaker and listener. The data were collected by using documentation methods and note-taking techniques. In analyzing the data, this study used a descriptive qualitative method. The data were analyzed by using a table. Informal technique was applied in presenting the analysis. This study used the theory from Joos (1967) in analyzing the language style which consisted of frozen style, formal style, consultative style, casual style, and intimate style. Meanwhile the theory from Holmes (2013) was used to analyze the language functions which included expressive, directive, referential, metalinguistic, poetic, and phatic. The result of this study showed there were four types of language style used by the characters in the Moxie movie. There were 4 data for formal style, 6 data for consultative style, 15 data for casual style, and 12 data for intimate style. Furthermore, there were three functions of language found in the movie, they were expressive, referential, and phatic functions. Meanwhile, directive, metalinguistic, and poetic functions were not found from the characters utterances.
Keywords: Sociolinguistics, Language Style, Speech Function, Moxie Movie
Abstrak—Penelitian ini membahas tentang jenis-jenis gaya bahasa yang digunakan oleh para tokoh dalam film serta fungsinya yang berjudul Moxie. Dengan mengetahui gaya bahasa serta fungsi bahasa, maka tidak akan terjadi salah tafsir antara penutur dan pendengar. Pengumpulan data dilakukan dengan menggunakan metode dokumentasi dan teknik mencatat. Dalam menganalisis data, penelitian ini menggunakan metode kualitatif deskriptif. Data dianalisis dengan menggunakan tabel. Teknik informal diterapkan dalam menyajikan analisis. Kajian ini menggunakan teori dari Joos (1967) dalam menganalisis gaya bahasa yang terdiri dari frozen style, formal style, consultative style, casual style, and intimate style. Sedangkan teori dari Holmes (2013) digunakan untuk menganalisis fungsi bahasa yang bersifat expressive, directive, referential, metalinguistic, poetic, and phatic. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa terdapat empat jenis gaya bahasa yang digunakan oleh para karakter dalam film Moxie. Ada 4 data untuk formal style, 6 data untuk consultative style, 15 data untuk casual style, dan 12 data untuk intimate style. Selain itu, ada tiga fungsi bahasa yang ditemukan dalam film yaitu fungsi expressive, referential, dan phatic. Sementara itu, fungsi directive, metalinguistic, dan poetic tidak ditemukan dari tuturan para tokoh.
Kata kunci: Sosiolinguistik, Gaya Bahasa, Fungsi Bahasa, Film Moxie
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Humans are social creatures that can not live alone. People always need someone to interact and to talk in order to express their ideas, feelings, thoughts, and opinions. The way people deliver it is through language. According to Wardhaugh and Fuller (2015: 2) the term language is a linguistic way of communication specific to a group including spoken, written, and signed modes of communication. Moreover, people used language to ask for help, persuade, deliver messages, even ask questions in order to get information or give the information to others.
Everyone has their own style while expressing or delivering their language. The unique style created by the people in using language known as language style. Language style is the choice of words while communicating. The term style is widely used in sociolinguistics as the variation of the language used to make the communication easy to understand by whom the language is used. Holmes (2013: 239) stated that the variation of language depends on whom, where, and who the language is used. It means style refers to the way someone conveys the same information in specific contexts that are used in different situations and circumstances.
Meyerhoff (2005: 27) argues that the language style refers to the personality, mindset, and condition of humans. Likewise, Holmes (2013: 1), the social context in which individuals communicate affects the way they speak. To different people, the same message may be conveyed extremely differently. In various social contexts, people frequently use different styles. For instance, when the students speak with their teacher, it will be more formal than when they speak with their friends. The reason is because the situation forces people to speak formally at school or at governmental institutions. Furthermore, it will be different when the president is giving a speech and when he is speaking with his family. Thus, the context of the situation very affects people when they speak in different circumstances. Language style is always connected with language functions.
In doing communication, sometimes people struggled to understand the meaning of the utterance itself. As a result, it might create misunderstanding between the addresser and addressee. Therefore, it is important to know what others are saying by understanding the function of language itself. People may have different reasons for using the language. Thus, it means language function leads the hearer to get the purpose of someone’s speech. According to Holmes (2013: 275), it is important to remember that any utterances may express multiple functions, and any functions may be expressed by a stretch of discourse which doesn’t in accordance with an utterance.
The phenomenon of language style not only appears in society. People can also see how the characters in the movie use different language depending on the context of the situation. The movie entitled “Moxie” was chosen as the object of this study because every character in this movie has their own style when they speak. There were some studies that were similar to the topic of this study. First, the study conducted by Rosyada (2021). The study focused on the analyzing the types of language style and describing the social factors affected the used of different style by the main character, Auggie. This qualitative study resulted in four types of language style used by the main character which are formal style, casual style, consultative style, and intimate style. The casual style is the most frequent data occurred in this movie. Meanwhile, the social factors affected the use of language were the participant, the setting and social context of the interaction, the topic, and the function.
Second, the undergraduate study written by Amalia (2021) which is purposed to identify the language style, find out the frequent style used and lastly to explain the implication of language style used by teachers in EFL class at Ihsaniyah Tegal in academic year 2020/2021. This descriptive qualitative approach used the theory by Joos in analyzing the language style. The study concluded that the first teacher used casual style dominantly
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(49%), the second teacher used casual style as the most style (46%), and lastly the third teacher used casual style (54%). Thus, among the five styles, casual style is the most frequently used.
Third, an article written by Sapriyani, et al (2013) used a sociolinguistic approach of language style in analyzing the data source. The study purposed in analyzing the language style used by the whole characters in The Last Tycoon novel. The study showed there are 104 conversations containing some kinds of language style in the novel. Those were informal style, colloquial style, formal style, consultative style, intimate style, casual style, and there is no frozen style in the novel. Then followed by the factors that influenced someone to speak differently in this novel. The dominant type of language style occurred in this novel is informal style and the most influenced using the language is topic.
Another article from Jamil and Nasrum (2018) discussed the language style and the social factors used by Albus in this novel. Descriptive qualitative method and note taking as the instrument is applied in this study. As a result, this study concluded Albus used all the types of language style and also the social factors influence the use of language style including participant, function and topic of the conversation, setting of place.
Based on the explanation above, this study is purposed to identify language style used by the characters in Moxie movie using the theory of language style proposed by Joos (1967) and also analyzing its language functions by using the theory by Holmes (2013).
The data in this study was taken from the comedy-drama genre movie entitled Moxie. Moxie movie was about 111 minutes long and was released on March 3, 2021. The primary data of this study is the spoken data that was taken from the conversations or dialogues between the actors and actresses in Moxie movie. The movie was taken from Netflix as a world’s streaming media
service of movies, TV shows, etc. Moreover, the script was downloaded from the website subslikescript.com. Moxie had chosen to be the source data of this study because this movie is so relevant to the study since the characters in the movie convey their languages with different styles according to the context and situation. Apart from that, another reason is the moral value of this movie which tells the audiences about the meaning of friendships and familial relationships.
The data collection used was a documentation method. As stated from Creswell in Dewi (2019: 4) qualitative documentation consists of public and private records that make this study easy to obtain language and words. Furthermore, the study was applied note-taking techniques in collecting data. The steps are downloading the data source including the movie and the script. Then watching the movie and reading the subtitles for 23 times. Transcribe the conversation in the movie into text and understand the plot of the movie. And lastly, note-taking the utterances that include types of language styles.
Descriptive qualitative method used in analyzing the data because the study explained descriptively or it can be said the data is analyzed in the form of words. The steps are first, the data were sorted by choosing the conversation that is related to the types of language style and classifying the utterances based on the theory proposed by Joos (1967). Then, find out the functions of its language based on the theory proposed by Holmes (2013) according to the data that has already been sorted and chosen. Lastly, the result will be concluded based on research findings. The process of presenting the analysis is through an informal method.
In the analysis, the data was classified based on the types of language style as well as its functions and the explanation according to the theory proposed by Joos (1967) and Holmes (2013). This analysis did not show all the data which are found but only show some cases for each
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type because there are many data that have the same types. Based on the data, the analysis of language style by the characters in the Moxie movie could be explained as follows.
Frozen Style
Frozen style can be called the most formal style among the five types. It is usually used for very formal situations like in religious rituals, and other respectful situations. Frozen style has the characteristics like using long complex sentences with grammatical structure, a harsh tone, and scientific vocabulary.
Based on the analysis, there is no frozen style found in Moxie movie.
Formal Style
Formal style is usually used by the people in formal speech, meeting, school, etc. this style usually has one way communication.
Data 1
(times : 36.10 – 36.15)
Principal Shelly : Oh, excuse me Mr. Davies. Kaitlynn Price, do you have a sweater or a jacket?
The situation of this utterance happened during the class that was taught by Mr. Davies. Principal Shelly came to the class because she saw Kaitlyn was wearing a tank top and that was not allowed at the school. She told Kaitlyn to change her stuff or wear jacket or sweater. Meanwhile, Kaitlyn did not bring jacket or any other clothes.
This utterance is suitable for the formal style since it happened during the class which shows the formal situation. In addition, it can be seen from the word “Oh excuse me, Mr. Davies” which indicates formal style because during the conversation it shows less intimacy and the speaker is careful to choose words. Although principal Shelly and Mr. Davies knows each other, because they are in a formal situation they could use formal words to make the conversation more polite.
For the language function, the word “Oh excuse me, Mr. Davies” is categorized as expressive function. Expressive function means to express the feelings by forgiving, congratulating, etc. In this case, the utterance above shows asking for permission because Principal Shelly entered the classroom when Mr. Davies still had the class.
Consultative Style
This style is less formal than two previous styles. Consultative style is usually used in a short conversation and the addressee responses use short expressions like “hmm”, “yeah”, “ohh”, etc.
Data 5
(times : 13.45 – 13.50)
Mitchel : Hey. Can I buy you a drink?
Lucy : No, thanks. I got it.
The conversation above happened during the break time. Lucy wanted to buy a soda drink at the canteen. Mitchel was there and he came over to her and asked to buy her a drink. Then she said, “No. thanks. I got it”. Mitchel also tried to seduce Lucy by touching her body. By the end, Mitchel spits out on Lucy’s drink and said “welcome to Rockport”, which means those wrongdoings always happened at this school.
As can be seen from the sentence “No, thanks. I got it”, it refers to the consultative style. It is because between Lucy and Mitchel they did not know each other before because Lucy was a new student. They are like strangers. Furthermore, Lucy only gave a short response to Mitchel which is the characteristics of consultative style.
From the utterance above, the sentence “No, thanks. I got it”, is categorized to the referential function because she provides information that Mitchel did not need to buy her a drink because she just got it.
Casual Style
Casual style is always used in informal situations. People use this style for talking with friends or
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relatives. That is why this style usually uses slang words and less focus on the grammar and diction.
Data 11
(times : 10.02 – 10.12)
John : Lisa
Lisa : Hey, John. How are you?
John : Good. Just getting some chives. Quick chive run.
The conversation happened when Lisa and Vivian were in the grocery to buy some food. Lisa met a man named John. And they had a short conversation. John called Lisa only by her name that means they already knew each other and it happened in relaxed situations. So, the conversation above can be categorized to the casual style.
The sentence, “Hey, John. How are you?”, indicates phatic function. Phatic has the function to express solidarity and emphaty to others. In this situation, Lisa showed solidarity to someone she knew.
Intimate Style
Intimate style is categorized as the very informal style because this style is usually used by the speakers who have very close relationships like family, beloved ones, and best friends. The words commonly used by this style are “honey”, “dear”, “I miss you”, and many more.
Data 26
(times : 1.45 – 2.28)
Mom : Take a picture holding a first-day-of-school sign?
Vivian : No, Mom. I'm in 11th grade.. I'm not doing that.
Mom : Okay, don't do the sign, just a picture of yourself.
Vivian : There. Did it. Bye.
Mom : Thank you. Have a great first day. Keep your head up high, Vivian
The conversation above took place at their house. Vivian got her first-day of school and Her mom named Lisa is preparing some food in the kitchen. Before Vivian went to school, her mom told her to do the sign (as their daily routine of school), but Vivian said she doesn’t need to do that anymore because she is in 11th grade now. She then took a picture but not hers, but her mom’s face.
From the conversation above, the word “Mom” indicates intimate style because Vivian and Lisa have a very close relationship as mother and daughter. Moreover, the conversation above happened in the house where they lived together and in informal situations. The word “Mom” does not have any functions of language.
This study focused on the two main problems which are the types of language style used by the characters and the language function of the style in Moxie movie. From the analysis there are four types of language style that occurred by the characters in the Moxie movie. There is no frozen style found in this movie. Meanwhile, for the rest types there are 4 data of formal style, 6 data of consultative style, 15 data for casual style, and 12 data for intimate style found in the movie. The characters tend to use casual style because the conversation mostly happens between students, their family or close friends. Meanwhile, for the function of language there are three out of six functions found in the movie. There are expressive, referential, and phatic functions. Expressive function aims to express an individual's feelings, thoughts, and ideas in order to create relationships with others. Referential function aims to provide information. Lastly, phatic function is usually used to express solidarity and empathy in daily life. However, the other three functions; directive, poetic, and metalinguistic are not found in character’s utterances in Moxie movie.
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