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D. Conversational Maintenance Work
This involves efforts to sustain conversation by inviting others to speak and by prompting them to elaborate their experiences. Women, for instance, ask a
number of questions that initiate topics for others, such as “How was your day?”
“Tell me about your meeting,” and “Did anything interesting happen on your trip?” Those kinds of utterances above open the door for others to speak and to
maintain interaction between the speakers.
E. Responsiveness
Women usually respond in some ways to what others say. A woman might say “Tell me more,” “That‟s interesting,” sometimes, she will only nod and
use eye contact to signal the addressee that she is engaged in the conversation, or perhaps she will ask a question. Responsiveness reflects the tendencies to care
about others and to make them feel valued and included Lakoff, 1975. It also affirms another person and encourages elaboration by showing interest in what
was said. This kind of responsiveness is shown by women in aim to keep the speaker continue the story.
F. Tentativeness
This may be expressed in a number of forms. Sometimes, women use verbal hedges such as “I kind of feel you may be overreacting.” In other
situations, they qualify statements by saying “I‟m probably not the best judge of
this, but…” Another way to keep talk provisional is to use a question tag statement. The examples of this feature are
“That was a pretty good movie, wasn‟t
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it?” “This necklace looks awesome, isn‟t it?” Tentative communication opens the door for others to respond and to express their opinions.
There has been controversy about tentativeness in women‟s speech. Lakoff 1975 is the first one to note that women use more hedges, qualifiers, and tag
questions than men, claims that these expressions represent lack of confidence and uncertainty. Calling women language as powerless language, Lakoff also states
that the women language reflects women‟s socialization into subordinate roles and
low self- esteem. As cited in Wood 1995, since Lakoff‟s work, other scholars,
such as Bate 1988, Wood and Lenze 1991 have suggested different explanations of women‟s tentative style of speaking. Spender as cited in Wood,
1995, in particular, points out Lakoff‟s judgment of the inferiority of women language is based on using men language as the standard, which does not
recognize the distinctive validity of different speech communities. Rather than look at the powerlessness of women‟s speech, some features in women‟s speech,
such as the use of hedges, qualifiers, and tag question may express women‟s
desire to keep the conversation open and include others. It is much easier to jump into a conversation that has not been sealed with absolute and firm statements. A
tentative style of speaking supports women‟s general desire to create equality and include others. It is important
that people outside of women‟s speech community may have different interpretations
of women‟s intentions in using tentative communication.
Sociolinguists have characterized female‟s language as emotional,
pleasing, supportive and conciliatory. Some studies also prove that women use
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inclusive pronouns, such as „we’ and ‘us’, to invite addressees into conversations.
Women tend to use minimal responses such as „mmhmm‟ and „uh-huh‟ to show support and attentiveness, use suggestions such as „let’s‟, to maintain respect, to
weaken their statements and modal verbs such as „may’ and ‘could’ to maintain equality and receive approval. From the features above, it can be seen that women
aim to understand other feelings when communicates. The objectives of communicate for them are to share and to understand each other feeling.
b. Men’s Speech Style
The differences between women and men when interact with each other may be the result of different socialization and acculturation patterns. Speech
pattern can be learned by analysing and researching on groups talk. The ways people communicate are different to be sex-specific. The miscommunication
which occurs between women and men may well attributable to the different expectations each sex has the function of the interaction, and the ways it is
appropriately conducted. Men have different features compare to women. “In
many ways, the masculine style of speech is directly opposite from the feminine style. Men seem to avoid self-disclosure, and prefer to talk about more impersonal
topics such as current affairs, travel, or sport ” Coates, 1997, p. 119. Coates also
says that the topic when women and men talk is very different. Women are usually better at expressing their feelings through words.
Klerk as cited in Coates, 1987, p. 108 states that “Men are prone to use stronger expletives, such as damn, shit, or worse,
than women‟s oh dear, or goodness.” Men always use stronger expletives, such as „damn‟ and „shit‟, whereas women
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