WOMEN’S LANGUAGE IN TANGLED MOVIE: A SOCIOLINGUISTIC STUDY

Abstract

ABSTRACT

The research aims to: (1) describe the employment of women’s language features, (2) reveal the function of women’s language, and (3) describe the modification of the use of women’s language performed by Rapunzel, as the main character in Tangled, to support the movie’s goal. The research uses descriptive qualitative supported by quantitative data analysis and focused on the utterances of Rapunzel’s Tangled. The data were in the form of words, phrases, clauses, and sentences in the context of dialogues. This research reveals three findings. First, there are only eight features, from the total ten features suggested by Lakoff, found in Rapunzel’s dialogues. They are lexical hedges or fillers, tag questions, rising intonation, empty adjectives, intensifiers, superpolite form, avoidance of strong swear words, and emphatic stress. Second, all of the functions of women’s language are found. They are to express uncertainty, to express feeling, to get response, to soften an utterance, and to emphasize an utterance. Third, the researcher found that Disney Picture, as the producer of the movie, modified the employment of women’s language in the movie by dropping the employment of precise color term and hypercorrect grammar, and manipulating the frequency of occurrence of the features. The result suggests that the employment of women’s language in this movie functions to boost the gender-neutral image of the movie.