It has been found that expressing respect was found in the couple of a male and a female student’s conversation. In this point, Al and Esti were as new
students and they did not know each other well. Therefore, they produced several phatic expressions to express respect to each other. The result indicates that 3
utterances or 0.3 were to achieve this phatic function. One of the examples is as follows.
Excerpt 69 Context
: Al and Esti talked about their occupation. Al
: BIPA. That’s = Yeah That’s Indonesian Program for Foreigners. So, if you say that I yeah. My expertise
is in Indonesian, how to teach Indonesian for foreigners.
And…but for how to teach English for Indonesian is… yeah…I never have. That’s I – I expect that my – my
– my job now can help me to improve my English. =
Esti : = That’s great = So, what about the learning
teaching activities going on in BIPA class? Ap644-45
Excerpt 69 describes that Al explained more about himself, especially his occupation. He told Esti about his expertise in teaching Indonesian for foreigners.
Esti was so astonished that her new friend was a teacher for BIPA. She gave compliments That’s great to sho
w expressing respect for Al’s amazing occupation.
C. Women and Men’s Conversational Styles
The conversation produced by each couple has several different conversational styles. Actually, the conversational style differences are based on
the previous results on communicative functions and functions of phatic communication. As explained, the differences can be seen from the topic, swear
word or taboo language, gossip, interruption, and back-channel response. However, the present researcher would like to discuss three points, namely topic,
swear word or taboo language, and gossip. The three points are highly relevant to the previous findings.
Moreover, it also needs some consideration in selecting those three styles. First, topic is quite important because it can direct the focus of conversation.
Second, swear word or taboo language is to see the nature of males’
conversational style. Last, gossip is to know the style of females’ conversation.
The detailed finding is arranged in the distribution table below.
Table 4.3 Distribution of Conversational Styles
No. Conversational Style
Speaker Male
Female Male and
Female 1
Topic 5
29 25
2 Swear word or taboo language
9 1
3 Gossip
20 Table 4.4 shows frequency of the conversational styles in the graduate
students’ conversation. Firstly, females discussed 29 topics because they might like to talk a lot about anything. Besides, males and females created 25 topics
because they probably also like to talk about unfocused conversation. Different from the two groups, males only produced 5 topics because they might not know
how to introduce new topics or develop the topics. Secondly, males produced 9 swear words in conversation. It is assumed that
they probably have accustomed to using such word and therefore they enjoyed talking using various swear words. However, females did not produce any swear
