CONVERSATIONAL ANALYSIS OF TAG QUESTION BASED ON GENDER AMONG STUDENTS OF LANGUAGE AND LETTERS OF IAIN SURAKARTA (A STUDY OF SOCIOLINGUISTICS)

CONVERSATIONAL ANALYSIS OF TAG QUESTION BASED ON GENDER AMONG STUDENTS OF LANGUAGE AND LETTERS OF IAIN SURAKARTA

(A STUDY OF SOCIOLINGUISTICS) 

 by Ulissyifa

   

Communication has become an essential part of human life. There are many ways that people use to communicate to each other, for delivering information, messages, opinions, speech, and thoughts. Moreover by having a cooperative communication, people can build and mantain their relationship with their group and society. Therefore, to realize the main instument of communication, people need language as a tool.
Language is an effective tool to communicate to each other and understand what is uttered. Furthermore, the use of language in communication can be expressed in two forms: spoken and written. One of the spoken forms of language use is conversation. It tends to convey spontaneous communication, including the relationship between the two or more participants; male or female. This will be an interactive way because contributions to a conversation are response reactions to what has previously been said.

In this research, the researcher does not depict concrete use of language but then how social and culture context influence the linguistic behaviour because there are certain situation that will differ the interaction of participants depend on their social role. This research uses sociolinguistics approach to analize the structure and organization of human interaction, with a more specific focus on conversational interaction; and tag question as one of the variety of features. 
Research since these early works has focused empirically on a variety of features, such as the use of tag questions, interruptions, questions, standard forms and minimal responses. It is now understood that men and women differ in terms of their communicative behavior (Coates, 1989).Early attempts distinguished speech norms of different communities focused on sociological factors such as economical status, ethnic minorities and age. Through this research, the belief that male and female speakers may somehow differ in their communicative behavior, and thus compose different speech communities, became the focus of researchers in the early 1970’s. Although lacking in empirical research, and influenced by bias about gender roles (Coates 1989:65), this initial work on women’s language, specifically the usage of several linguistic features, proved influential toward becoming an important issue in the study of linguistics.In explaining these differences, however, Gumperz (1982) warns that there is a sense of variation in speech differences between men and women. Beside gender, the other dimensions of difference, such as those of age, class, and ethnic group must be clear as to what is being identified as a difference between the sexes. Unless examining identifiable linguistic behavior, such as interruptions or tag questions, it is difficult to validate generalized claims of dominance, politeness or subordinance. Even then, the formal construction of utterances is no consistent guide to what function they might be performing in a specific context.

The complexity of findings about language and gender, where published claims sometimes contradict one another, and where the various things that "everybody knows" are not always confirmed by experiment. This happens in every area of rational inquiry, but it's especially common in cases where generalizations are associated with strong feelings. In this case, we're talking about the nature of men and women as biological and social categories, and the way individual men and women interact in both private and public spheres. It is quite easy to make the claim that men and women differ in their linguistic behavior. Assumed gender roles are contrastive, with men often thought as dominant speakers, while women are placed in a subordinate role during the conversation process. Important to realize in this issue, however, is the different perspectives the two sexes have in casual speech. ‘If women speak and hear a language of connection and intimacy,’ a clash of conversation styles can occur, when confronted with a men’s language concerned with status and independence (Tannen, 1990). Misinterpretation of the use of linguistic functions, thus, often arises.Robin Lakoff in her influential work Language and Woman's Place (1975), depicted a typical female speech style, allegedly characterized by the use of features such as hesitations, qualifiers, tag questions, empty adjectives, and other properties, which she asserted to have a common function, to weaken or mitigate the force of an utterance. Thus tag questions are associated with a desire for confirmation or approval which signals a lack of self-confidence in the speaker.Lakoff's description of female speech style was based on her remembered impressions rather than on any systematic, quantitative observation. When subsequent researchers went out and counted things, they often found it difficult to confirm her observations. For instance, some studies found that men actually used more tag questions than women did.By those different findings, the researcher figures out tag question as one of the linguistic behaviour in a more specific scope, which differs the gender between male and female interaction. It is the sixth semester students of Language and Letters Department of IAIN Surakarta, where the status as student as an ideal figure which almost every adolescent is in the process of maturing self. The researcher points out on finding the productivity of tag question use on their daily conversation, whether it is between male or female students, or male to female students.By the cultural factor of Surakarta, Central Java, the students of IAIN Surakarta dominantly use Indonesian and Javanese language in their daily conversation. It is known that variation term in many Asian language is more complex than the other languages, especially in Javanese language. Geertz in Wardaugh (1992:272) states that, “Before one Javanese speaks to another, he or she must decide on an appropriate speech level: high (kromo), middle (madya), low (ngoko)”. Furthermore, the tag question forms which are usually used by the students in their aggregate are categorized in middle (madya) or low (ngoko), because For example, when the speaker utters iyo toh or nggih toh in Javanese tag, and iya kan in Indonesian question tag. However, in the present study the tag question as a part of discourse markers mostly occur at the end of the statements bringing with it significant Javanese cultural bound. The tag questions can dominantly used in students conversation while expressing uncertainty, insecurity, the wish to be accepted; tag questions also function as expressions of politeness, as hedging and boosting devices. Moreover, they facilitate interactive communication. The researcher also chooses this tag question analysis because there is only a few researcher who gives attention in employing this theory.Cognitively, students have begun to have a critical thought because they have a higher curiousity related to academic material as well as others with the result in their logical development to be conveyed in their daily conversation with their partners or to himself in thinking internally. Students have a high creativity in language manner either in borrowing another language substance, changing that has been existed, or creating a new one.College students have a different value and manner while they are in the campus which binds together with academic rules, either acquainted to college system or attitude in  the campus as a reflection of knowledge implementation and belief in religion. The values of social status which is given to the role of students are quite high untill there are some ironic utterance while students do improper thing with allusive expression aimed to their status and identity as student. The students attitude in campus also influenced by their social background, whom they talk to, include their linguistic behaviour.

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