Women Language Used by the Main Character in the “Black Widow” Movie: Sociolinguistic Study

Women Language Used by the Main Character in the “Black Widow” Movie: Sociolinguistic Study Amanda Putri Syarifudin1, Hero Gunawan2 1,2 English Department, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Widyatama, Indonesia , Abstract Keywords This research aims to identify the features of women language that are found and the dominant features of the women language in the utterances of the main character in the "Black Widow" movie based on Lakoff’s theory. This research was conducted using a qualitative descriptive method. The sources of the data for this research are the Black Widow movie and its movie script that has been downloaded. From the findings, there are only nine of ten features of women language found in Natasha’s utterances, those features are lexical hedges or fillers (16%), intensifiers (28%), ‘hypercorrect’ grammar (6,7%), ‘super polite’ forms (1,3%), avoidance of strong swear words (4%), emphatic stress (25,3%), tag question (4%), rising Intonation on declarative (6,7%) and empty adjectives (8%). Intensifier is the most dominating feature used in Black Widow movie with 28% of Natasha’s utterances, seen she wanted to attract attention while assuring the addressee with her statement. women language; sociolinguistic; black widow; women language feature I. Introduction Communication is the process of delivering messages by someone to other people to tell, change attitudes, opinions or behavior either directly orally or indirectly through the media. In this communication requires a reciprocal relationship between the delivery of messages and recipients namely communicators and communicants (Hasbullah, et al: 2018). Communication is an important thing that cannot be separated from our lives as social beings. With communication, we can relate to each other well in daily life. Megginson defines communication as the process of imparting knowledge, concepts, and understanding to an individual or a community. A tool used to convey messages from a communicator to the recipient is called a communication medium. The most common medium of communication is language. Language is the most effective means of communication to communicate our thoughts, intent, and purpose to others. Languages are the primary means of communication that certain human groups within the society in which they live, according to John Lyons (1981). The best human communication system, according to some social groups, is language, as noted by Lyons. The language study relating to social or community is sociolinguistics. Sociolinguistics examines how social constructs including gender, ethnicity, age, and socioeconomic class influence or interact with language use. (Coulmas, F. 2013). The study of language and gender in linguistics clarifies how gender affects language use. People use language as both a social system and a means of communication and are a component of some cultures and societies. (Hendar et al. 2021). Furthermore, language has a role to create and give identity based on the gender of the speaker. ______________________________________________________________ DOI: https://doi.org/10.33258/birci.v5i3.5819 18351 Budapest International Research and Critics Institute-Journal (BIRCI-Journal) Volume 5, No 3, August 2022, Page: 18351-18358 e-ISSN: 2615-3076 (Online), p-ISSN: 2615-1715 (Print) www.bircu-journal.com/index.php/birci email: "Women have allocated the function of demonstrating right behavior in the community," claims Janet Holmes (1992:173). Women are supposed to speak more courteously from this perspective. Swearing is not something a woman should do, such as shouting “damn” or “shit”, women will just say “oh dear” or “oh, my God”. Lakoff (in Holmes, 2013:302) characterized women’s language by ten linguistic features: lexical hedges or fillers, tag question, rising intonation on declarative, empty adjectives, precious color term, intensifiers, super polite form, hypercorrect grammar, avoidance of strong swear words and emphatic stress. The researcher decided to focus on the women’s language features as the topic because it plays a part to show the different sides of women. To support that statement, the researcher chose the Black Widow movie. Black Widow has scenes that emphasize women's experiences and explore women's relationships, and the movie relies on a strong main character, Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) to represent all women. Also, Lakoff’s theory of women’s language features was chosen because Lakoff is the creator of the concept of women language feature and because Lakoff’s theory is simple to comprehend for character analysis. Research Question The researcher formulated two questions as follows 1. What are the features of the women language used by the main character's utterance? 2. What is the dominating feature of the women language used in the main character’s utterance? II. Review of Literature Sociolinguists investigate how culture influences language via the lens of linguistics. They are interested in determining the social functions of language and the methods by which it conveys social meaning. They want to know why we communicate differently depending on the social context. (Holmes, 2013:1). In other words, they are interested in understanding why people communicate differently depending on the social setting. The study of how people communicate in a variety of social settings yields a wealth of information not only about the operation of language but also about the interpersonal connections that exist within a society as well as how people use language to communicate and create elements of their social identities. Furthermore, according to Vika and Ervina (2022) sociolinguistics is the study of how individuals utilize language, in what manner individuals apply language differently in various regions of the country, and how society decides which languages will be recognized in courts and education. It has a significant issue where many people are completely unaware of how language is utilized in different contexts. The features of women's language are certain qualities of language that women use to distinguish between women's and men's language characteristics, according to Lakoff (1975) in her book Language and Woman's Place. Ten women language features are present, including lexical hedges or fillers, tag question, rising intonation on declaratives, empty adjectives, precise color terms, intensifiers, ‘hypercorrect’ grammar, ‘super polite’ forms, avoidance of strong swear words, and emphatic stress (Holmes, 2013:302) One feature of the language used by women is lexical hedges, based on Lakoff (1975). Women often employ lexical hedges or fillers to convey hesitation and a lack of confidence, and to express uncertainty (Holmes, 2013:304). The words such as ‘kind of, ‘sort of’, ‘uhh’, ‘uhm’, I guess’ ‘well’ ‘I mean’ are examples of lexical hedges or fillers. 18352 A tag question is a brief query that frequently appears at the end of a statem (...truncated)