Gender Representation In Jimmy Fallon And Oprah Winfrey Commencement Speeches: A Discourse Analysis

Abstract

This thesis deals with the investigation of the language used by Jimmy and Oprah in commencement speeches. The aim of this study is to analyze power by determining the verb process, mood, and modality and reveal the dominant gender represented by Jimmy and Oprah. Several theories are applied to support this study. These theories comprise Discourse Analysis supported with Systemic Functional Linguistics focused on experiential and interpersonal meaning by Halliday and Matthiessen (2004), theory of gender by Wood (2009), theory of power by Fairclough (1989) and theory of representation by Hall (1997). This thesis is conducted by the application of qualitative method with documentary technique. The data of this research are in the form of text utterenced by two speakers which downloaded from https://hellogiggles.com/news/jimmy fallon-marjory-stoneman-douglas-speech-video-trancript/and https://news.stanford edu/news/2008/june18/como-061808.html. There are 60 clauses as the main data of this research. In analyzing the data, Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) is applied to find the most dominant process used by Jimmy and Oprah. The analysis is completed by elaborating the overal analysis by the theories mentioned before. The finding of this research shows that the dominant gender representation of Jimmy and Oprah are inverted. Jimmy is characterized as a powerless character that shows his caring, giving support, subordinate and weakness. Oprah is depicted as a powerful character that shows her leadership, control and assertiveness. Thus, Jimmy is represented as feminime character and Oprah is portrayed as masculine character in the speech. This finding is obtained from the dominat process, mood and modality used by them which is also related with the theory of power.