Language Style based on Gender Found in the YouTube Gameshow “The Kardashians vs The West family”
Keywords:
Game Show, Gender, Language Style, YouTubeAbstract
Language style is an important aspect of communication used by speakers to express ideas, feelings, and social relationships. This study aims to identify the types of language styles and communication characteristics used by men and women in the YouTube game show. This study uses a qualitative method. Joos’s (1967) language style theory is used to analyze five types of language styles: frozen, formal, consultative, casual, and intimate. Tannen’s (1990) gender communication theory is used to analyze communication characteristics, including report talk, rapport talk, directness, and indirectness. The data were taken from the YouTube video of Family Feud entitled “The Kardashians vs The West Family” by transcribing all conversations and then separating and classifying the utterances based on gender. The results show that men are more dominant in using report talk and directness to convey information and control interaction, while women are more dominant in using rapport talk and indirectness to build and strengthen interpersonal relationships. However, women also use report talk and directness in competitive situations, while men use indirectness to maintain their self-image and rapport talk to build closeness. In addition, men use casual, consultative, formal, and intimate styles, in which intimate style is also used in their role as the host to create closeness with participants and audiences. Meanwhile, women use casual, consultative, and intimate styles to express feelings and strengthen social relationships. These findings indicate that although men and women use similar language styles, there are differences in their communication purposes based on gender.
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