interviews, and many others. In addition, interruption also occurs in television drama or series and Gossip Girl is one of them. In this television drama, there are many
interruptions occur since it deals with the daily life of men and women in America. Gossip Girl is a popular TV series in America which was produced from 2007
until 2012 in six seasons during that period. The success of this TV series is seen from the first season of Gossip Girl which becomes the most successful drama during
that time. This drama portrays American lifestyle and society and shows interactions among the upper class people in which the portrayals o
f men’s and women’s interactions are clearly illustrated. This drama also depicts how those people live
within certain rules in their society and denotes how power and status become important aspects to rule society.
Hence, Gossip Girl, especially the first season, is selected as the object of this research for three reasons. First, studying interruptions in Gossip Girl TV series,
which is a representation of real life in America, can help people have more understanding and awareness towards interruption which occurs in daily
conversations. Furthermore, since Gossip Girl TV has succeeded in grabbing a lot of audiences, this TV series can be a device to
increase people’s awareness towards interruptions.
Second, this TV series portrays the upper class society’s life in America
which shows how men and women should behave appropriately in every occassion of their daily life. Thus, Gossip Girl TV series become a suitable object to illustrate how
the characters employ different speech strategies particularly in using interruption within their conversations. Third, there are a lot of interruptions found in the mixed-
sex conversations among the characters. Besides , the representation of people’s daily
life here makes this TV series more suitable to be the research object as interruption is commonly found in the daily conversations among the characters.
B. Research Focus
There are several problems that can be identified based on the conversations among the characters. Those problems can be identified through sociolinguistics
approach since the TV series brings a theme about upper class society. The first problem is gender issues on how men and women use different languages in a
society. In this case, the conversations among the characters can be investigated in terms of the linguistic forms that are used by male and female characters.
Second, the topic of conversations among the characters can also be analyzed since there are a lot of characters with different stories and social backgrounds.
Therefore, different topics also occur among different characters in this TV series. The third problem that can be identified is the speech styles of male and female
characters. There are several different speech styles between men and women which can be investigated, for example, in terms of vocabulary choices, interruptions, tag
questions, verbal fillers and many others. However, this thesis only focuses on the phenomenon of interruption due to
the limitation of the researcher’s ability, knowledge and time. Consequently, this research is limited to the mixed-sex conversations in the first season of Gossip Girl
TV series. For this reason, there are two problems to be analyzed. The first is the types of interruption in mixed-sex conversations. In line with this, Beattie 1982:
100 mentions four types of interruption in conversation. Those are overlap
interruption, simple interruption, silent interruption, and butting-in interruption. Therefore, the classifications of interruption of Gossip Girl TV series are revealed
through this research. The second problem is the functions of interruption. According to Murata in Li, 2001: 269-270 interruption functions as a cooperative and
disruptive act. Therefore, these functions are analyzed within this research.
C. Formulation of the Problems
Based on the research focus, two problems are formulated as follows. 1.
What are the types of interruption appeared in the mixed-sex conversations in Gossip Girl TV series?
2. What are the functions of interruption found in the mixed-sex conversations
in Gossip Girl TV series?
D. Objectives of the Study
The objectives of this research are: 1.
to identify the types of interruption in the mixed-sex conversations in Gossip Girl TV series, and
2. to discover the functions of interruption in the mixed-sex conversations in
Gossip Girl TV series.
E. Significance of the Study
This research is expected to provide some contributions both theoretically and practically.
a. Theoretically, the research findings are expected to enrich the knowledge
about sociolinguistic phenomena in the society, particularly on interruption.
b. Practically, this research can provide some references that are related to
interruption which can be used by other researchers to broaden knowledge
on this phenomenon.
8
CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
A. Literature Review
1. Sociolinguistics
As the member of society, men and women employ different speech strategies in their conversations. Women prefer to use speech style that functions to support
other speakers, to build a connection with others and to show solidarity within their society. On the other hand, in their interactions, men use different style from women
that functions to compete and to show their position in society since they are aware of their social hierarchy. Thus, the ways men and women interact are related to the
social function of interaction as well as the speakers’ social status. These language phenomena are discussed in the field of Sociolinguistics.
Sociolinguistics is the study of the ways people use language in social interaction Chaika, 1982: 2. Sociolinguistics comes from the word
‘socio’ which means society and
‘Linguistics’ which means the study of language. This implies that in understanding language, people have to consider some social factors surrounding
the language being used. Furthermore, Chaika 1989: 2 states that every social institution is maintained by language. It means that other than merely to
communicate with others, language is also used to preserve a social system in a certain social institution.
The purpose of studying Sociolinguistics is to obtain a better understanding of how language functions for communication in society Wardaugh, 2006: 13.
Language, in addition, has a great power in society. It can be used to show status,
