COMPARISON OF SEXIST LANGUAGE USED IN THE TWILIGHT SAGA ECLIPSE MOVIE
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COMPARISON OF SEXIST LANGUAGE USED IN
THE TWILIGHT SAGA ECLIPSE MOVIE
Ni Wayan Ayu Santi
Non-regular Program English Department Faculty of Letter Udayana University
Abstract:
Penelitian ini berjudul “Comparison of Sexist Language Used in the Twilight Saga Eclipse Movie. Penelitian ini mengacu pada penemuan penggunaan bahasa sexist yang digunakan oleh karakter perempuan and karakter laki-laki baik itu karakter utama maupun karakter pendukung dalam dialog film tersebut. Metode yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah metode kualitatif. Metode ini merupakan salah satu metode yang mengacu pada pemahaman dan penjelasan fenomena social, berarti data dapat diambil melalui wawancara, percakapan, rekaman, catatan dan lain-lain. Data yang diteliti dimulai dari episode pertama sampai akhir, dimana terdiri dari 18 episode.
Ada tiga teori utama yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini, teori pertama ditulis oleh Lakoff (1973), menganalisis karakteristik bahasa perempuan seperti lexical hedges, tag question, precise color terms, empty adjective, intensifier, swear word, super-polite form, rising intonation, hypercorrect grammar dan emphatic stress. Teori kedua ditulis oleh Holmes (1992). Teori ini membahas tentang karakteristik bahasa laki-laki seperti ungrammatical form, multiple negations, pronounced –in form, delete –ed at the end of form in pronunciation, dan impolite forms. Dan teori yang terakhir membahas tentang perbedaan bahasa perempuan dan bahasa laki-laki secara linguistic menggunakan teori yang ditulis oleh Coates (1986). Coates menyebutkan beberapa perbedaan tersebut seperti verbosity, tag question, questions, command and directives dan swearing and taboo language. Di dalam penelitian ini ditemukan karakter perempuan tidak hanya menggunakan karakteristik bahasa mereka namun menggunakan karakteristik bahasa laki-laki, dan sebaliknya.
Kata kunci: Sexist Language, Film, Dialog
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1. Background
Sexist language is a language concerned with women and men language. Sex in sexist word refers to sexual distinction. Holmes said the sexist language is a language that expresses both negative and positive stereotypes of women and men. The negative stereotype of women is animal imagery but less than men. The positive stereotype of men is sexual prowess. And food imagery is one of positive stereotypes of women (Holmes, 1992: 336). But Wijayanto said sexist language is
a language that refers to gender and used in linguistic level, for example word, morpheme, phrase or sentence (Jurnal Penelitian Humaniora, 2006:134).
Based on the explanation above, women and men language have characteristic or features to keep their conversation. In fact, conversation has the form of dialogue on theater or film. Film as representative language is used in this study. It is the American romantic fantasy film based on Stephenie Meyer’s 2007 novel entitled The Twilight Saga Eclipse. The film is distributed by Summit Entertainment in August 2009.
And the last, this study is concerned with the comparison of women and men language used by women and men characters both main characters and supporting characters in The Twilight Saga Eclipse movie. This analysis is very interesting because it discusses the data clearly.
Based on the introduction above, the problems in this study are as follows:
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1. What language features are used by women and men characters in The
Twilight Saga Eclipse movie?
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2. What is the comparison of women and men’s language features in The Twilight Saga Eclipse movie like?
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3. Aims of the Study
This study is focused on the differences between men and women’s language in dialogue by analyzing words used by female characters and male characters in The Twilight Saga Eclipse movie. Therefore, the aims of this study are:
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1. To find out the features of language used by female and male characters in The Twilight Saga Eclipse movie.
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2. To compare the women and men’s linguistic features as represented in The Twilight Saga Eclipse movie.
The method used to analyze the data is as qualitative method. The term qualitative research is a general definition that includes many different methods used in understanding and explaining social phenomena. According to Denzin and Lincoln (1994), qualitative research is a field of inquiry in its own right. It crosscuts disciplines, fields, and subject matters. Some steps in analyzing data presented as follows:
First, the data were taken from film which consisted of 18 episodes. In each episode, analysis started on female and male characters. The analysis was based on women and men’s features proposed by Lakoff (1973) and Holmes (1992). Second, analyzed the differences between women and men’s language were analyzed based on theory proposed by Coates (1986). And the last, female and male language features based on the data were compared.
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1. 1st Episode: Fire or Ice
This episode talked about the main characters, Edward and Bella. Bella Swan is the girl coming from Phoenix, Arizona and living in Forks with her father, Charlie Swan. She is 18 years old. And she has a boy friend called Edward Cullen. He is the vampire, and 17 years old. This episode tells about Bella’s feeling.
Dialogue 1:
The dialogue occurred between Bella Swan and Edward Cullen as main characters in early evening after they came back to school at grass land. Edward wanted to ask Bella to get married with him but Bella was unsure.
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1. Bella |
: “You know, I’ve got an English final. I gotta focus.” |
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2. Edward |
: “Marry me.” |
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3. Bella |
: “No.” |
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4. Edward |
: “Marry me.” |
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5. Bella |
: “Change me.” |
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6. Edward |
: “Okay I will if you marry me. It's called a compromise.” |
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7. Bella |
: “It's just called coercion. Marriage is just... It’s a piece of paper.”[she goes into his arms and kisses him] |
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8. Edward |
: “Where I'm from it's the way one says I love you.” |
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9. Bella |
: “Well, where I come from, at my age, it’s the way one says, I just got knocked up.” |
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10. Edward |
: “So you're worried about what people will think.” |
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11. Bella |
: “You know two out of three marriages end in divorce.” |
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12. Edward |
: “Well, I think you’ll find the vampire / human divorce rate is a little lower. So, marry me.” |
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13. Bella |
: “I can't. I have to be back at four.” |
Analysis:
In sentences (1), (9) and (11), Bella uses lexical hedges you know and well. She uses them to start the conversation, show her unconfidence for Edward’s proposal and her situation to accept it. Second, Bella uses ungrammatical form in sentence (1), gotta means have got to or have got a (Hornby, 2005: 672). She shows her language style in the conversation. And the last, she also uses intensifiers such as just in sentences (7) and (9). They are used to strengthen her feeling, her mind to the addressee (Edward) and don’t want to get situation like her parents; divorced.
Meanwhile, in sentence (12), the male character; Edward uses women’s language features such as lexical hedges. He uses well to give other situations around them.
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1. Verbosity
There is an age-old belief that women talk too much. The cultural myth of women’s verbosity is nicely caught in this fifteenth-century. Women are described as not liberal in language but ever in secure. Jespersen in Coates (1922: 252) said that rapidity was no proof of intellectual power, and some of the slowest readers were highly distinguished men. In this case, women do not only talk too
much but also men in some conversation such as husband-wife conversations, friend’s conversation, and staff meeting and anymore are shown below:
Dialogue 2:
The dialogue occurred at Rosalie’s room in the evening between Rosalie as the supporting character and Bella as the main character.
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1. Jasper : “No sign of the intruder. But Victoria continues to make appearances.”
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2. Rosalie : “Go blather to some one else about the joys of becoming a newborn.”
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3. Bella : “Okay… Rosalie, I don’t understand what I did to make you hate me so much.”
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4. Rosalie : “Hate… I don’t hate you… I don’t particularly like you, but… Bella, I envy you.”
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5. Bella : “What? That’s ridiculous.”
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6. Rosalie : “No, it’s not. You have a choice. I didn’t. None of us did. But you do, and you’re choosing wrong. I don’t care how miserable your human life is.”
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7. Bella : “My life is not miserable. I mean, it’s not perfect. Nobody’s life is perfect.”
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8. Rosalie : “Mine was. Absolutely perfect. There were things I still wanted, to be married, with a nice house and a husband to kiss me when he came home, a family of my own. Royce King was the most eligible bachelor in town. I barely knew him. But I was young. I was in love with idea of love. On the last night of my life, I left a friend’s house late. I wasn’t far from home.
Analysis:
Rosalie tells her past to Bella and her feeling. She never gets human experiences such as having a daughter and a husband that really love her. It shows that women talk much than men as English proverb, Coates (1986) said many women, many words; many geese, many turds. It occurred if women shared her feeling.
In area of women’s language features based on theory proposed by Lakoff (1973) was found women used all their feature except precise color terms that used by women in their conversation. On the other hand, men’s language features proposed by Holmes’s theory (1992) was found men used ungrammatical form or vernacular language and swearing or taboo language.
Meanwhile, on the analysis of differences between women and men linguistic style based on theory proposed by Coates (1986) was found women and men used verbosity, the use of tag questions, questions, command and directive and also used swearing word or taboo language.
Finally, the analysis in was found women more polite than men. As far as analyzed, women used men’s language features such as ungrammatical form. Also men used women’s language features such as lexical hedges, intensifier, super polite form and hypercorrect grammar.
Coates, Jennifer. 1986. Women, Men, and Language, New York: Longman Group UK Limited.
Denzin, N. K. 1994. The Discipline and Practise of Qualitative Research. Available from: http: //web.media.mit.edu/2kbreman/mas790/01/Denzin,the disciplineandpracticeofqualitaiveresearch.pdf. Accessed: May 23, 2013. 19.02
Holmes, Janet. 1992. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. New York: Longman Group UK Limited.
Hornby, A S. 2010. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. Seventh Edition.
Page: 1470.New York: Oxford University Press.
Lakoff, Robin. 1973. “Language and Women’s Place”. Language in Society. Vol. 2.No. 1. Page: 45-80. Available from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4166707/. Accessed: April 15, 2009. 20:06.
Wijayanto, Agus and Endang Fauziati. 2006. ”Jurnal Penelitian Humaniora”. Sexist Language in LKS Bahasa Inggris for Junior High-School Student in Surakarta. Vol. 7.No. 2. Page: 133-151.
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