Instrumentality Conversational Dominance REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

25 lower pitch, use swears and taboo language, adopt a more assertive style in group interaction, adopt prosodic features more typical of men e.g. Falls rather than rising intonation, and address themselves in public to the traditional male topic, such as business, politics, and economics. Although, this is a good strategy for women, Coates 1997b finds out a problem in this strategy. The problem is women redefine themselves in terms of men ‟s value. This is a flawed strategy because women are going for searching their own satisfactory identity. Besides this theory, some researchers agree that there are two main theories of gender differences in language. Both of the theories reflect the two views of women‟s status as a group. The first theory is the dominance theory. This theory claims that the difference in language between men and women is a consequence of male dominance and female subordination Lakoff, 1975; Fishman, 1983. Based on this theory, women are a suppressed minority group in society which is shown by the way they use language. On the other hand, men are the superior group and the way they use language shows their power in society. The second theory is the difference theory Coates, 1986; Tannen, 1990. This theory believes that men and women belong to different subcultures and that any linguistic differences can be attributed to cultural differences.

b. The Causes of Differences

The differences between men‟s and women‟s speech are not complete without the causes of the difference. There are some researchers that analyze the 26 cause of difference. There are five causes of the differences in men and women speech that are taken from different articles and books.

1. Language Styles

Spolsky 1998, p. 31 states that “at the times, we are more careful, and at times we are more relaxed in our speech or writing, just as at times we are more careful and more relaxed in other kinds of beha vior, like how we dress or eat.” Spolsky‟s statement relates to the formality as one of the examples of the language styles. A speaker is usually aware of the addressee ‟s status. A person can choose to speak formally or informally depends on the addressee. It is important to represent the speaker‟s sense of identity of language style.

2. Register and Domains

Spolsky 1998, p. 33 states that the occupation may affect the speaker in the term of the new concept. In example, people who work in a particular field, can develop some terms such as “hacking” and “internet surfing”. The terms may be difficult to be understood for some people who do not keep up with the internet revolution. It is also the same with cricket, there are some words such as “sticky wicket” and “hit for a six” that can only be understood by those who experience cricket. Spolsky 1998, p. 34 states that there is a typical domain which define the way people speak in terms of social situation. The two common domains which are mentioned by Spolsky are work and home.

3. Slang and Solidarity

Spolsky 1998, p. 35 mentions that slang is used as intimacy in a group. However, slang is considered disobey the social norm because it included some