gender, group membership, education and so on Wardaugh, 2006: 15. In this case, the relationship between language and gender are discussed under the study of
Sociolinguistics. The other purpose of studying this field is to be aware of people ’s
behavior which can be observed through the use of language which people use to reveal their personal identity, character and background Chaika, 1982: 2.
In short, language phenomena, which are related to social factors, are analyzed under the study of Sociolinguistics. There are two purposes of learning and
understanding Sociolinguistics. First, it functions to show how languages are used in society. Second, it functions to show
people’s identity, behavior, character and background.
2. Language and Society
Language is bounded within a society that it is impossible to understand one without the other. It has been stated before that every social institution is maintained
by language Chaika, 1982: 2. In this case, the social institution includes law, religion, government, education and family are maintained by language. People use
language within their social interaction to show their identity, character or background.
Every society has different way of using language. In sociolinguistics term, the difference is called as language variety. Hudson and Ferguson in Wardaugh,
2006: 25 define variety of language as a specific term of linguistic items or human speech patterns that associates with some external factors. In other words, every
society differs in the use of sounds, words, or grammatical features in which these linguistic items are related to a geographical area or a social group. It can be said that
the use of language by certain society aims to show their unique identity or background to the other society.
The discussion of sociolinguistics is also related to the relationship between the use of linguistic items, such as sounds, words, grammatical features, with the
concepts of identity, power, class, gender, or status. In relation with this, Wardaugh 2006: 10 states that the social structure determines linguistic structure or behavior.
As an example, in age-grading phenomenon, young children speak differently from older children and, in turn, children speak differently from mature adults. In addition,
Fairclogh in Xu, 2009: 10 gives another example of the relationship between language and social class or status. The example is placed in the use of one linguistic
feature which is interruption between doctors and medical students. He states that the doctors interrupt more than the students. In this case, it shows that the powerful
participants tend to control and constrain the contributions of non-powerful participants in the use of interruption.
In summary, people use language in every social interaction. Language is used to show people’s identity, status, class, power, or gender in society. In other
words, people use certain language features to fulfill their purposes in social interaction. Therefore, the discussion of language cannot be separated from its
society as well.
3. Language and Gender
The topic of language and gender is one of the subtopics of Sociolinguistics. This field discusses different language use between men and women in a particular
language. Not merely talking about the language, studying men’s and women’s
language can also reveal the roles they play in the society. In this case, gender means as an important key to men
’s and women’s identity in society. The term gender has a larger scope than sex. Zimmerman and West 1987:
125-127 determine sex as the given and gender as achievement. It is an achievement or accomplishment of the interactional activity for social needs as the expressions of
masculine and feminine natures. On the opposite, the term sex is only used as a biological basis to distinguish between male and female. Thus, it can be said that the
term gender is related to social construction meanwhile sex is connected to the biological factor of humans.
The discussion of gender lays on men’s language against women’s which is
discussed different communication styles employed by men and women. Tannen 1990: 9 states that the different communicative styles happen because in a
conversation men and women have different purposes in using language where women’s speech intends to focus on connection and men’s speech focuses on status.
In other words, women concern to develop intimacy with other people in conversation. On the other hand, men tend to ignore people’s intimacy in order to
save their position in social hierarchy. To sum up, gender in general statement is defined as an important key
showing human’s identity. Furthermore, since language is known as a medium to
show human’s identity and status in society, therefore the discussion about gender is also related to how people from different gender use language. Then, by
understanding the different speech strategies of men and women, their social roles and identity can also be revealed.
