19 children in different gender have the chance on learning how to communicate with
others in their surroundings. Tannen 1986 examines that “between the age of five
and fifteen when children are learning to have conversations, they play mostly with friends of their own sex” p. 142.
Their surroundings especially the same sex playmates contribute big influence on the ways of talking when they grow up. Furthermore, Tannen 1991 identifies
that “girls like to play cooperatively” where they will establish and maintain the relation they have built by involving their friends to know their secret. This means
that the way of talking the secret is more important than the secret itself. That best friend is all about. Conversely, boys like to play competitively where they will
“maintain their own story and status” to be accepted as an equal for the others. Mostly they are talking about who is the best at what and it belongs to competitive
talk p. 143.
4. Discourse Analysis
Johnstone 2008 mentions that discourse analysis is not centrally focused on language as an abstract system. It is more about analyzing what happens when people
apply the knowledge they have about language through their memories of things they have said, heard, seen or written. It can be said that when people exchange
information, express feelings or make things happen, they have applied the knowledge which can be stated as rules, about what words generally mean and what
goes where in a sentence p. 3. Concerning on how speakers indicate their semantic PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
20 intentions and how hearers interpret what they hear, the discourse analysis will be
useful in answering questions which focus on human life and communication pp. 6- 7. In short, discourse analysis considers how languages, spoken or written, enact
social and cultural perspectives and identities Gee, 2001, p. 1. According to Brown and Yule 1983, there are two kinds of texts as the
representation of the discourse namely written text and spoken text. The word of text is used as a technical term in order to refer to the verbal record of a communicative
act pp. 5-6. Moreover, they also describe that discourse analysis applied the two different functions of language namely transactional and interactional. The
transactional function refers to the function which language serves in the expression of content while the interactional refers to the function that involves expressing social
relations and personal attitudes p. 1.
B. Review of Related Studies
The researcher reviews two different sociolinguistics studies on gender and communication before conducting this research. First, Gemilang 2014 conducted a
study on the conversational styles of the same gender woman-woman and different gender woman-man. This study aims to present the use of conversational style and
its language contrasts on different types of conversations; single-sex conversations and cross-sex conversations. Moreover, the alumnus of the English Language
Education Study Program in Sanata Dharma University used two different episodes of Oprah Winfrey Talk Show which represent the influence of different gender in
21 communication. The first episode is the interview of Oprah Winfrey and Jane Fonda
which represents single sex conversations. Meanwhile, the second episode is the interview of Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry which represents cross-sex
conversations. The
researcher developed Gemilang’s study where she made this study more specific. The researcher only analyzed one type of conversations, mixed-sex
conversation. The researcher, in addition, identified the conflict happened in the conversations that considered as the result of men’s and women’s different point of
views in using conversational style. Second, Suciu 2015 conducted a sociolinguistics study on the influence of
communication in building relationships. She explained how communication itself can make or even break the relationships. Her study focused on factors that lead the
speakers to get misunderstand. Moreover, she used Theory from Tannen 1986 as the basic reference in his study. Suciu’s journal was published in the Journal of
Romanian Literary Studies. Similarly, the researcher also conducted the same topic and then the
researcher expanded the analysis by using conversations in the movie as the data resource. In addition, the researcher also combined the factors of misunderstanding
with the use of conversational style by the characters in the movie.
C. Theoretical Framework
The difference of gender itself has affected the way of communicating in society. Both men and women cannot avoid the conflict which leads them to get
22 misunderstanding in a conversation. Even though men and women are facing the
same situation, they have different assumptions to understand the meaning or even solve the problem when they communicate.
In order to answer the first question where it is about the use of conversational styles by Gigi and Alex in their conversation, the researcher uses the theory which is
suggested by Pearson 1985. The researcher uses her theory as the basic foundation to solve the first research question.
The second question is the factor that affects misunderstanding, exists in cross-sex conversations of
He’s Just Not That into You movie. In order to answer the question, the researcher uses the theory from Tannen 1986. She claims that there
are three main factors that can create misunderstanding between men and women in a conversation
namely involvement
versus independence,
message versus
metamessage, and cooperative versus competitive. In conducting this research, the researcher combines some theories to answer
and solve the two research questions. To solve the first research problem, the researcher analyzes the linguistic features of conversational styles. For the second
research problem, the researcher analyzes the factors that affect the misunderstanding by conducting a discourse analysis. In this part, the researcher concerns with the
context of the language used by Alex and Gigi. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
23
CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The researcher classifies this chapter into some different parts namely research method, research setting, research subject, data gathering technique, data
analysis technique, and research procedure.
A. Research Method
This research was a sociolinguistic study that is concerning on language, and its society. According to Holmes 2008, sociolinguistics
is “the study of the relationship between language and the context that is used” p. 1. In this case, the
study is conducted by using sociolinguistics as the main concept of the research because the researcher wanted to find the relationship between the use of
conversational styles by men and women in cross-sex conversations. In other words, both men and women have different ways to communicate in society then the
researcher wanted to find how the way of they communicate influence their relationship especially in cross-sex communication.
Furthermore, this research was also using qualitative research as the method to get the data. Ary et al. 2008 describe qualitative research as a philosophical
approach that is concerning with social reality. This means that the researcher focuses on the understanding of human behavior where it covers how they do, how they think
