Previous Research Findings LITERATURE REVIEW AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

The phenomena of gossip as stated before are reflected by female characters in Gossip Girl Season 1, a television series. Female characters of Gossip Girl Season 1 talked about a lot of gossip among them. Those female characters are Lillian van der Woodsen, Serena van der Woodsen, Jenny Humphrey, Kati Farkas, Blair Waldorf, Isabel Coates, Dorota Kishlovsky, Eleanor Waldorf, and Laurel. The researcher focuses on three problems which appear in the Gossip Girl. The first problem deals with types of gossip that are used by female characters in Gossip Girl Season 1. To identify this problem, the researcher uses Deborah Jones’s theory in Talbot, 2010: 75 that classifies the types of gossip into four categories: house talk, scandal, bitching, and chatting. The second problem deals with speech features of gossip. Gossip Girl Season 1 has many speech features that are used in doing gossip among female characters. The resear cher uses Lakoff’s theory in Cameron, 1990: 248 that classifies speech features of gossip into five categories: meaningless particles, neutral words, tag questions, requisite information, and requests. The third problem deals with functions of gossip in Gossip Girl Season 1. Not only do women gossip, but the act of gossiping itself also has many functions. Those functions are to provide information, to give entertainment, to enhance friendship, to influence others, and to make social comparison. The diagram of the conceptual framework can be seen in the following analytical construct. 48 Sociolinguistics Language Society Language Variety 21 st Century American Society Idiolect Dialect Genderlect Register Women’ Language Men’s Language Gossip Types Speech Features Functions A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Gossip among Female Characters in Gossip Girl Season 1 Figure 2. The Analytical Construct House talk Scandal   Bitching  Chatting Meaningless particles Neutral words Tag questions Requisite information Requests To provide information To give entertainment To enhance friendship To influence others To make social comparison Gossip Girl Season 1 49

CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHOD

In this chapter, the researcher focuses on the research method. The researcher divides this chapter into four parts of discussion: the type of the research, describing the approach of conducting this study; data preparation, including the object of the research, data and source of data, research instruments, and techniques of data collection; method of data analysis, showing how the data are analyzed; and data trustworthiness, describing how the validity of the data findings is checked.

A. The Type of the Research

This research used descriptive qualitative research since it emphasizes on describing the phenomenon of the use of language in its context by interpreting the data. This approach provided a richer and more in depth understanding of the population under study or research participants. Moreover, a qualitative perspective assumed that knowledge is constructed through communication and social interaction. Vanderstoep and Johnston 2009: 166 say that a qualitative research perspective assumes that people cannot analyze and understand an entity by analysis of its parts; rather, they must examine the larger context in which people and knowledge function. The purpose of qualitative research is more descriptive and predictive. A deeper understanding of researcher’s viewpoint is the goal of this research. Bogdan and Taylor in Moleong, 2006: 3 state that as qualitative research, the