ANALYZING WOMEN’S LANGUAGE FEATURES USED BY LISA ALLARDICE IN HER NEWS ARTICLES

ELTR Journal, e-ISSN 2579-8235, Vol. 6, No. 2, July 2022, pp. 128-143 English Language Teaching and Research Journal http://apspbi.or.id/eltr English Language Education Study Program Association, Indonesia ANALYZING WOMEN’S LANGUAGE FEATURES USED BY LISA ALLARDICE IN HER NEWS ARTICLES Maria Ludwina Maharani Paila Sanata Dharma University, Indonesia correspondence: https://doi.org/10.37147/eltr.v6i2.157 received 1 June 2022; accepted 21 July 2022 Abstract The study deals with women’s language features used by Lisa Allardice in her news articles that were uploaded in UK daily newspaper, The Guardian. The aim of this study is to analyse the women’s language features using Lakoff’s theory and the dominant feature that Lisa Allardice used in her news articles. The data were collected from three selected news articles using document analysis and described using qualitative method. The first article entitled Can Objects Teach Us about Reality?’: Ruth Ozeki on Her Women’s Prize-Winning Novel, the second article entitled The King and Queen of Popular Fiction: Marian Keyes and Richard Osman on Their Successes and Struggles, and the last article entitled Candice CartyWilliams: “It’s Time to Write a Book Just about Black People”. The findings showed that there are 6 women’s language features with 74 data. Kind of women’s language features that were found are lexical hedges or fillers, empty adjectives, precise colour terms, intensifiers, hypercorrect grammar, and emphatic stress. The dominant feature used by Lisa Allardice is hypercorrect grammar. Keywords: dominant feature, hypercorrect grammar, Lisa Allardice, news articles, women’s language features Introduction Background of the study Gender refers to what is called as woman and man. Both women and men have different characteristics. Women tend to be weak, graceful, talkative, and caring. While, man tends to be strong, brave, simple, and masculine. These characteristics were constructed by society and affected the way of using language in communicating. Language is a tool to deliver or express something in our mind to the public. As it was mentioned before, women and men tend to have a distinctive approach to express something. This statement is in line with a theory from Lakoff about women's language. In this theory, Lakoff explains about women’s language features that shows the characteristics of women’s speech and how it differs from man's speech. The study of language and gender is part of sociolinguistics branches. It interprets how characteristics of gender affect the use of language. Due to this phenomenon, the researcher wondered whether it is only applied in the oral form or 128 This work is licensed under CC BY-SA. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. ELTR Journal, e-ISSN 2597-4718, Vol. 6, No. 2, July 2022, pp. 128-143 also in written form. The researcher used Lakoff’s theory about women’s language features to do the analysis. There are ten types of women’s language features: lexical hedge or filler, question tag, empty adjectives, precise colour terms, intensifier, hypercorrect grammar, super polite forms, avoidance or strong words, emphatic stress, and rising intonation on declaratives (Lakoff, 1975 as cited in Holmes and Janet, 2011). The researcher is interested in the study of language and gender and journalism. The researcher wondered whether gender also affects the way journalists write news and whether women’s language features can be seen in written form. To find the answers the researcher conducts this research. The researcher selected three news articles written by Lisa Allardice that are uploaded in UK daily newspaper, The Guardian website. Then the news articles will be analysed using Lakoff’s theory about ten types of women’s language features. From the analysis, the researcher will find the answers of two research questions: what are women’s language features that are applied in writing the three selected news articles by Lisa Allardice? And what is the dominant women’s language feature that is used by Lisa Allardice in the three selected news articles? Theoretical Framework Language and Gender Eckert (2003, as cited in Oktapiani, 2017) describes gender as the differences in function, social roles, responsibilities between men and women which are managed by society in her book entitled Language and Gender. Hornby (1989 as cited in Pebrianty,2013) described woman as an adult female human being or female sex. Women and men have different characteristics and language. The work of De Beauvoir (1949) and Danish grammarian Jespersen (1922) as cited in Rahmi (2015) believe that men’s language is better than women’s language. Women only copy men’s language as their language but it is not as perfect as men use it. Meanwhile, Lakoff has a different opinion. She believes that women have their own language features that differ from men. Then, Lakoff provides her own theory about women’s language features. Women’s Language Features Women and men tend to have different characteristics. Women tend to be weak, graceful, talkative, and caring. While, man tends to be strong, brave, simple, and masculine. The differences between women and men also represent their language features. Lakoff (1975) classified women’s language features into ten types. There are lexical hedge or filler, question tag, empty adjectives, precise colour terms, intensifier, hypercorrect grammar, super polite forms, avoidance of strong words, emphatic stress, and rising intonation on declaratives. Lexical hedges or Fillers Holmes and Janet (2013) state that lexical hedges or fillers used by women to weaken the statement. The forms of hedges are I think, I believe, I’m sure, sort of, kind of, perhaps, may, would, and could. Meanwhile fillers are those words that are used when someone is trying to remember what she/he wants to say. The examples are umm, uh, hmm, and ah. Women tend to use more hedges than men. 129 ELTR Journal, e-ISSN 2597-4718, Vol. 6, No. 2, July 2022, pp. 128-143 Tag Question Lakoff (1973 as cited in Pebrianty,2013) stated that” A tag is midway between an outright statement and a yes-no question: it is assertive than the former but more confident than the latter”. Tag question is a phrase added at the end of an utterance. The phrase consists of the previous auxiliary that is used in the statement. Tag questions that is used by women and men are not significantly different, but women tend to use tag questions more often than men. It is used to find a validation from someone else related to what is being said or to seek information from the addressee, as in the following: 1. This dress is beautiful, isn’t it? 2. Diana will come, won’t she? Empty Adjectives Group of adjectives that has specific and literal meaning indicates the admiration or approbation of a speaker (Lakoff, 1973 as cited in Pebrianti, 2013). Women tend to use it to express emotional reactions about something. The examples of (...truncated)