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