The Production of Gossip Girl Season 1

many previous researches, especially in the form of journals or theses on this topic. However, it does not mean that they are the same. This is because each research has its own distinctive focus and methodology. One of the previous researches is “A Sociolinguistic Study on Speech Features of Female Students of Petra Christian University while Gossiping in C ampus” by Dewi Rosita, a Bachelor Degree student of Petra Christian University in 2001. This research has an objective to investigate the relationship between the gossip talked about with the speech features produced. The researcher used Lakoff’s theory 1975 about speech features of gossip found in women’s utterances. In this study, the researcher noted and recorded the conversations among the female students of Petra Christian University from any subjects for four months until she got ten conversations. The findings shows that there are indeed certain characteristics of women’s speech features as seen through their gossip. The speech features found in this research are mainly ‘lexical hedges or fillers’ and ‘intensifiers’. It is also discovered that the topics of gossip have a big influence on speech features that occur. The participants use certain speech features based on the topics of gossip that they apply. Then, another research related to gossip is conducted by Sara Ahmed, a Bachelor Degree student of The University of Nottingham in 2011 with the title “Analyzing Women’s Talk and Gossip between Two Female Friends”. This research is published in the form of an article. Her findings are that features of what Coates deems ‘women’s talk’ such as hedges, minimal responses and collaborative talk can be found in the data. This is not solely, nor particularly primarily, due to the fact they are female. It is more insightful to view the linguistic features found in the data as a result of equality in power between the participants. It is, in essence, a group of other variables such as setting, social status and identity that has resulted in this equality of power and the linguistic features discussed serve to reflect and nurture this equality as, ultimately, it is what constitutes the friendship. Meanwhile, this research is not the same as those two previous research. This research focuses on analyzing gossip among female characters in a TV Series. Specifically, it identifies the types, speech features and functions of gossip.

C. The Conceptual Framework

The discussion on gossip phenomena is undeniably an important topic in linguistics area since it involves certain processes and its occurence is influenced by certain social and linguistic structure. To be more specific, the discussion on those things is always under sociolinguistic study since this study is also about language and society. Language is concerned with the exchange of information; that, after all, is what it or, at least, grammar is mainly designed to do. However, linguists and those in most other disciplines interested in language have traditionally assumed that the information to be exchanged is factual knowledge about the world Dunbar, 2004: 104. Meanwhile, in a society where people are drawn together for a certain purpose or purposes, they use language to reveal or conceal their personal identity, character, and background. It means that language and society are two points that are related to each other.