The Causes of Differences
29
and precise color terms. Wood 1993b also lists six features of women‟s speech,
but different from Lakoff 1975 , who search for the features of the women‟s
language, Wood ‟s theory explains more on the women‟s attitude and women‟s
aim when they talk. The six features of the women‟s speech are equality, showing
support, attention to the relationship level, conversational maintenance work, responsiveness, and tentativeness. Besides
women‟s speech, Wood 1993b also mentions six features
of men‟s speech, namely status and control, instrumentally, conversational dominance, direct and assertive, abstract, and less emotionally
responsive. Henry Tajfel as cited in Coates, 1997b proposes a theory about the
reason why women talk uses the me n‟s language, namely inner-group relationship
and social change. Based on the theory, there are two possible strategies for the inferior social group, which are to accept or to reject the inferior status. This
theory is the theory that has been supported by the two main theory, namely dominance theory Lakoff, 1975, Fishman, 1983 and difference theory Coates,
1986, Tannen, 1994. Both of the theories and Tajfel theory believe that men are the superior one in the society and women are the inferior one, but Tajfel theory
expla ined women‟s status in the society further.
The last part covers the factors of the differences between men‟s and
women‟s speech. There are some causes of the differences in men‟s and women‟s speech. The factors are language styles Spolsky, 1998, register and domains
Spolsky, 1998, slang and solidarity Spolsky, 1998, power relation Spolsky, 1998; Schmidt, 2002, and social situation Spolsky, 1998.
30
The theories are summarized and used to analyze the research problems. For the first research question,
“Which features of women‟s and men‟s speech styles
are found in Angelina Jolie‟s utterance?” The researcher uses Wood‟s theory
about men‟s and women‟s features rather than Lakoff‟s theory about women language because Wood studies
women‟s and men‟s speech more to the purpose not only the features in speech style
. Wood also provides both men‟s and women‟s speech features, which is different with Lakoff that only provides the
features of women language. For the second research question,
“What factors affect Angelina Jolie‟s speech style in Mr. and Mrs. Smith
Movie?”, the researcher Spolsky‟s and Schmidt
‟s theories to analyze the factors that affect Angelina‟s speech style in the movie.
Spolsky‟s and Schmidt‟s theories were chosen because their theories explain the social aspects that affect the way someone speak rather than gender
aspects.