The Topical Strategies Used By Male and Female Characters of Glee Movie in Tv Series

I Kadek Agus Asmara Putra

Non Regular Program English Department Faculty of Letters Udayana University

Abstrak

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengidentifikasi strategi yang digunakan pengguna bahasa Inggris baik wanita maupun pria di dalam merubah topik di setiap pembicaraan mereka. Untuk itu, teori Topical Strategis oleh Stenstrom (1994) diterapkan di dalam penenlitian ini. Metode penelitian dokumentasi diaplikasikan guna mengumpulkan data yang berupa skrip scenario acara televisi berjudul Glee dalam episode “The Audition” dan “The Rocky Horror Show” yang kemudian dianalisis melalui metode kuantitatif. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa terdapat perbedaan jenis perubahan topik oleh pemeran pria dan wanita di dalam setiap pembicaraan mereka. Percakapan antara sesama pemeran pria cenderung lebih sering melakukan pemindahan topik dibandingkan percakapan oleh pemeran wanita.

  • 1.    Background

The phenomenon of topical shift can be found in the conversation between male and female. Interestingly, the usage of the topical strategies and its topic shift marker might be found differently among those different genders. Men and women also have differences in linking between speaker turns and shifting the topic in conversation (Coates, 1986). Those two strategies always occur when people have conversation or chat. Women usually take their turn in conversation by explicitly acknowledging the contribution of the previous speaker and then talk on a topic directly connected with what has been mentioned before. On the other hand, men do not feel they have to make a link with the previous speaker’s contribution. Men are more likely to ignore what was said before and to concentrate on making their own points. In shifting the topic of the conversation, men tend to shift the topic

abruptly whereas woman develop the topic progressively and shift the topic gradually because the woman usually build on each other’s contribution. Related to the reasons above, this research is intended to analyze conversation to find out the differences between male and female topic strategies used by the characters of Glee Movie in TV series

  • 1.    Problem of the Study

Based on the background mentioned above, the problems formulated in this research include:

  • 1)    What kind of topic strategies and topic shift marker were used by the male characters in the Glee Movie in TV series?

  • 2)    What kind of topic strategies and topic shift marker were used by the female characters in the Glee Movie in TV series?

  • 3)    What are the similarities and differences between the male and female characters in the application of topic strategies in the Glee Movie in TV series?

  • 2.    Aims of The Study

In accordance with the problems stated above, the objectives of the present research are as follows:

  • 1)    To find out kinds of topic strategies and topic shift marker used by the male characters in the Glee TV series.

  • 2)    To find out kinds of topic strategies and topic shift marker used by the female characters in the Glee TV series.

  • 3)    To investigate the similarities and differences between the male and female characters in applying topic strategies.

  • 3.    Research Method

The data in this research were gathered from the Internet. It consists of primary and secondary data. The Primary data were taken from an American musical comedy-drama television series script entitled Glee in the episode of “The Audition” and “The Rocky Horror”. Meanwhile, the secondary data were the video of those two episodes filed in a DVD. This TV series was produced in the year of 2009. These data were chosen because they contained a daily life conversation between male-male, female-female and male-female characters. In addition, the data were assumed consisting of several occurrences on the topic strategies and topic shift marker.

  • 4.    The Topical Strategies Used By Male and Female Character of Glee Movie in Tv Series

    4.1    The Topical Strategies Used By Male

The male character found using several topical strategies. They used topic changing, topic shifting, topic drifting and topic digressing.

  • Table 1. Topical Strategies and Marker Used by Male Characters

in Male – male Conversation

Kind of topical strategies

Male

Markers

occurrence

percentage

Topic changing

7

50%

do you know, I wonder

Topic shifting

4

28.75%

well, by the way

Topic drifting

1

7.14%

associative link

Topic digreesing

2

14.28%

as matter of fact, by the way

Total

14

100%

Based on the result, it is clearly that men liked to swear more, did not talk about emotions, talk about sport more, talk about women and machines in the same way, insult each other frequently, are competitive in conversation, dominate conversation, speak with more authority, give more commands, interrupt more. Therefore, the activities of men to change their topic are quite frequently (Keith and Worth,1997:222).

  • 4.2 . Topical Strategies and Marker Used by Female Characters in FemaleFemale conversation

Unlike the male characters, the female characters were found using several topical strategies. They used topic changing, topic shifting, topic drifting and topic resuming.

Table 2. Topical Strategies and Marker Used by Female Characters

in Female – Female Conversation

Kind of topical strategies

Female

Marker

occurrence

percentage

Topic changing

2

40%

well

Topic shifting

1

20%

in fact

Topic drifting

1

20%

associative link

Topic resuming

1

20%

well

Total

5

100%

The table shows that topic change dominated the topical strategies used by women in their conversation. However, if we compare to the male results, the women tended not to change or shift their topic during conversation. They were likely to finish a topic of conversation before starting the new one. Similarly this speaking attitude was supported by Lakoff (1975),who claimed that women

tended speak less frequently, avoid coarse language or expletive, and lack a sense of humour. These all make women have a different way of speaking from the men.

  • 4.3    Topical Strategies and Marker Used by Male and female in Male-

    Female Characters

The different findings came when the conversation happened between male and female. They applied all types of the topical strategies: topic change, topic shift, topic drift, topic resume, and topic terminating.

Table 3. Topical Strategies and Marker Used by Female Male Characters

in Female – Male Conversation

Kind of topic shift

Topic change

male

occurrence

percentage

12

42.86%

Topic shift

10

35.72%

Topic drift

2

7.14%

Topic resume

2

7.14%

topic resume topic Ierminatng

1

3.57%

1

3.57%

Total

28

100%


Female

Shift marker

Occurennce

percentage

11

50%

well

6

27.27%

okay

2

9.10%

no

3

13.64%

well

okay

'    22

100%


The female characters were found less frequently using the topical strategies compared to the male characters. However, their number of using topical strategies rose up when they met the male character as their conversation partner. In contrast with the female characters, the use of topical strategies on male were characters found significantly frequent. The male characters tended to use topical strategies when they spoke both to female and male characters

  • 5.    Marker.

Based on all the discussion about the topic shift above, it could be found that several different shift markers marked the occurrence of the topic shifting.

However, the absence of shift marker also occurred in several conversation contain topic shift. Therefore, the use of shift markers on all analysis could be inferred from the table below. In fact, the shift markers found in this analysis seemed not to be not really matched to the theory claimed. However, it strongly stated that these shift markers function as the determination of each topical strategies used by the characters in this study.

  • 6.    Conclusion

Based on the analysis, there are only 4 six types of the topical strategies found on the script of those TV series. They are: topic change, topic shift, topic drift, topic digress, topic resume topic resume. These 5 types of topical strategies were found in different number of occurrences. The topic change and topic shift were mostly dominated the number of occurrence. Meanwhile, the topic drift, and topic digress occurred quite often. However, the topic resume and topic terminate were quite rare found on the analysis. In addition, in terms of gender, the topical strategy used found different between male and female characters. The female characters were found less frequently using the topical strategies compared to the male characters. The male characters tend to use topical strategies when they spoke both to female and male characters. On the other hand, the writer found a slight difference on shift markers usage. The shift markers found in this analysis seemed not to be really matched theory claimed. However, it strongly stated that these shift markers function as the determination of each topical strategy used by the characters in this study.

  • 7.    References

Coates, Jennifer. 1986. Women, men and language: A Sociolinguistic account of sex differences in language. London: Longman.

Keith, George R and Shuttleworth, John. 1997. Living language. Canada: Holder & Stoughton Canada.

Lakoff, R. 1975.Language and woman’s place. New York: Harper and Row.

Stenstrom, Anna-Brita. 1994. An Introduction to Spoken Interaction. London and New York: Longman