Gossip Girl TV Series

interruptions. This result was contradicted from the assumption that interruption was only used as a way to dominate. The second research was conducted by Chera Kurnia Larasati 2014 in her thesis entitled A Conversational Analysis of Interruptions in Modern Family Season 1 Series. The aims of the research were to identify and to describe the types and the functions of interruption in Modern Family season 1. The method of the research was descriptive qualitative by using conversational analysis as the approach of the analysis. The result presented that four types of interruption were found in conversations. Those types were simple interruption, overlap, butting-in interruption and silent interruption. In addition, the highest frequency was found in the use of simple interruption, where the lowest occurrence found in the use of butting-in interruption. Besides, this research also studied the three functions of interruption. Those were cooperative, intrusive and neutral. Disagreement as the subtopic of cooperative was found as the most dominant function used among the characters. Meanwhile, clarification as the subtopic of cooperative was used less in the conversations. Although interruption becomes the main interest of both previous research, this issue is broad and this research analyzes interruption from different perspective from them both. While Youxing’s research focused on analyzing the differences and similarities between men’s and women’s speech particulary in interruption in mixed- sex conversations, this research focuses on analyzing the types and functions of interruption in mixed-sex conversations. Then , Chera’s research used different approach from this research. Chera used conversational analysis since it analyzed the phenomena within daily conversation where interruption is one of them. In contrast, this research uses Sociolinguistics which focuses on language phenomena in society and interruption is one of the phenomon which occurs in men’s and women’s conversation particularly in mixed- sex conversations. Furthermore, Gossip Girl TV series is used as the object of analysis which is not used by those two previous research. Therefore, by using different objects, approaches, and sources, some research with the same interest, may show different findings.

C. Conceptual Framework and Analytical Construct

This research is conducted by employing Sociolinguistics as the approach of the study. This language field is used to analyze various language phenomena in a society. Those language phenomena are commonly found in conversations. Moreover, conversation depicts how men and women interact in society. The analysis of men ’s and women’s language within society is discussed under the subtopic of Sociolinguistics which is language and gender. In addition, speech differences between men and women are the main discussion in language and gender. The differences are presented in three linguistics structures namely discourse, lexico-grammar and phonology. According to Poynton 1989: 88 there are six differences between men ’s and women’s speech in discourse stratum. Those are interruption, switching pause, topic choice, back-channel choice, speech acts choice, and initiating conversation. Related to those speech differences between men and women, interruption becomes the main concern of this analysis. Interruption is classified into several functions and types. Ferguson in Beattie, 1982: 100 states there are four types of interruption: simple interruption, overlap, butting-in interruption and silent interruption. On the other hand, Murata in Li, 2001: 269-270 states that there are two basic functions of interruption. Those are cooperative and intrusive interruption. Furthermore, Zimmerman and West 1975: 116-117 claim that interruption occurs frequently in mixed-sex conversations. Thus, in this research, interruptions in mixed- sex conversations are selected as the main concern of the analysis. In this analysis, Gossip Girl TV series is selected as the object of this research. This TV series depicts the social life of Upper East Side people in America. In this TV series, many interruptions occur within conversations among men and women. Therefore, this research concerns to analyze the types of interruption which employ different functions in each of its occurrence.