22 uncertainty tag, to ask agreement and provide an easy entrée into the conversation
or as a facilitative tag and to soften a criticism or as a softening tag. Meanwhile, Bex used this feature only to ask agreement or as a facilitative tag. From this
result, it is true that “Treating all tags as signals of uncertainty is clearly
misleading” Holmes, 2001, p. 290. Furthermore, intonation used in the tag also played an important role in
conveying meaning of a sentence or utterance containing a tag question. In this case, intonation became the indicator whether a tag question served as an
uncertainty tag, a facilitative tag or a softening tag. When a tag was said with a rising intonation, it served as an uncertainty tag. However, when a tag was said
with a falling intonation, it served as a facilitative or a softening tag. Facilitative and softening functions created by the falling intonation also reflected another
side of the two female main characters in the movie – cared about others’ feelings.
Therefore, it is very important to use a precise intonation in order to obtain the intended function of a tag.
2. Rising Intonation on Declaratives in
Confessions of a Shopaholic
Movie
Rising intonation on declarative was also used infrequently by the two female main characters Bex and Suze in
Confessions of a Shopaholic
movie. This feature was only used for six times by those characters in the movie. In this case,
Bex used more rising intonation on declaratives than Suze. Bex used it for five times while Suze used it only for one time. From the result, it is concluded that
this feature was used by Bex only to indicate lack of finality, reduce the force of an utterance and show positive politeness. In addition, Suze used this feature only
23 to show positive politeness. Meanwhile, rising intonation on declaratives used to
show uncertainty was not used by Bex and Suze in this movie. Just like tag question, it was also proved that the use of rising intonation on declarative was
not always to show uncertainty or indicate lack of confidence. In addition, the rising intonation helped the two female main characters in the movie producing
soft, friendly and non-authoritative utterances which all of them are parts of politeness. It also showed that those women did care about
“politeness and solidarity
” Britain, 1992, as cited in Blahušová.
B. Recommendations
In this part, the writer provides some recommendations for students in English department and future researchers. First, students in English department,
especially those who are studying Sociolinguistics, can use this paper as an additional reference in order to enrich their knowledge about the two features of
women’s language, namely tag questions and rising intonation on declaratives. Second, for future researchers who plan to conduct a research dealing with
women’s language, they are suggested to choose another data to analyze, such as novels, comics and talk show transcripts to improve this research. Future
researchers can also choose other features of wo men’s language to analyze, for
example „superpolite’ forms and avoidance of strong swear words. Therefore, the research hopefully would be a beneficial reference to enrich the readers who are
interested in the phenomenon of women’s language. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
