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CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
In this chapter, the researcher will present a discussion of theories in which the study was developed. There will be two main areas of concern, namely
the theoretical description and the theoretical framework.
A. Theoretical Description
This part is divided into two main topics, namely language and gender and the theories causes of differences.
The first topic covers the men‟s and women‟s speech features by Lakoff 1975 and Wood 1993b. The second topic covers
some theories related to language and gender and the causes of the differences between men‟s and women‟s speech.
1. Language and Gender
Language is the system of communication in speech and writing that is used by people in a particular country or area Hornby, 2010. Language is
people ‟s identity that differentiates one with the other because almost every
country and area has different languages. People are able to know someone ‟s
status from the way the person speaks. The language style that is used by someone can show which social group someone belongs. Some sociolinguists such as
Lakoff 1975, Spender 1985, Coates 1986, Cameron 1995, have made some researches about the influence of gender and language in society. Most of them
believe that the characteristics of language which used by women is different from
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men. According to Jong 1997 and Reik 1954, as cited in Haas 1979 “The possible cause of that difficulty is that men and women in fact not really be
speaking in the same language.” Women and men actually do not speak in the same language, therefore, they often have difficulty to understand each other and
sometimes they misunderstand each other. Wood 1993a also explains that the studies about gender and communication have been done by many researchers
since decades. In one of the studies that is done by Johnson as cited in Verderber, 1995 shows that men and women actually have different assumptions in
communication. He states that both men and women live in two different worlds and that becomes great evidence why both of them have different forms of
communication in the society, such as different strategies and communication goals. In the other study, Wood 1993b
also considers that feminine‟s and masculine‟s communicating styles show the clear evidence in the distinction of
the speech communities. The feminine style represents a woman‟s way of speaking and the masculine style represents man‟s way of speaking.
Tannen 1994 believes that women and men are typically engaged in distinctive styles of communication with different purposes, rules, and
understandings on how to interpret talk. It means that men and women learn the language, the rule, and how to interpret language separately, therefore, they have
some difficulties to communicate with each other. The differences between men and women are also found in the form of
discrimination in society. Women are always considered to be cornered in language use. Women are always judged to talk like a lady. They need to talk
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