GENDER REPRESENTATION OF THE FEMALE CHARACTERS IN PERCY JACKSON: SEA OF MONSTERS: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Abstract

This thesis deals with the investigation of language used by the female characters in Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters. The objective of this research is to find and reveal social issues dealing with gender representation and gender inequality inside the movie. Several theories are provided to help this research in revealing the related issues. These theories comprise Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) focuses on transitivity system, theory of representation, theory of gender and also social and cultural context. This thesis is conducted by the application of qualitative method with documentary technique which focuses on internet based. The data of this research are in the form of movie subtitles downloaded from http://www.yifysubtitles.com/. There are 95 utterances of every character used 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 the characters. The next is investigating and discussing the result by using the related theories mentioned earlier. The finding of this research exposes that the dominant gender representation of each character is different. Annabeth still maintains the common gender represented by most women. She represents feminine gender while Clarisse tends to represent masculine gender. In addition, Percy (the male character involved as the comparison) still represents masculine gender. This finding is obtained from the dominant process used by each character which is also hooked with theory of gender. Through this finding, it is clearly found that another issue concerning with gender inequality is indeed portrayed and proven in Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters. This x gender inequality is depicted through the portrayal of gender imbalances on the female characters which is realized by the portrayal of Annabeth as a powerless female character who dominantly represents feminine gender. Moreover, it is also supported by the depiction of Clarisse. Even though she is described as the powerful character that dominantly represents masculine gender, however these characteristics are projected by her powerful god father.