A SPEECH ACT ANALYSIS OF COMMANDS USED BY MALE AND FEMALE STUDENTS AT SIXTH SEMESTER ACADEMIC YEAR 2012 OF ENGLISH DEPARTMENT IN FACULTY OF LETTERS OF JEMBER UNIVERSITY

Abstract

Misunderstanding in a conversation caused by gender has become a growing issue for a long time. Gender is qualities and behaviours expected from a male or female by society that makes male and female are accused to have certain quality. The example of those qualities is women should use the low-rise intonation and command a wider range intonation. Psychologically women tend to think emotionally and man tends to think logically. Men tend to use direct language than women. One of the examples is the way of giving command. Sometime woman and man are hard to understand each other. Those differences lead the researcher to study the differences between a man and a woman in giving command in English because different way of thinking may lead to different understanding. Misunderstanding leads to disappointment. The goal of this research is to identify the types of command in English which is mostly used by male and female students in seventh semester of English Department in Faculty of Letters of Jember University, to identify the types of command strategies that they mostly used related to the gender and also to find the factors that related to gender that influence the selection of using the command. The results are expected to help male and female students to understand each other; with expectation the answer will reduce misunderstanding between male and female students. By using the result male will try to understand female and vice versa. This research uses Blum-Kulka (1982) DCT theory to investigate the case happens in this study. In classifying commands the researcher uses theory of commands conducted by Holmes in Richards and Schmidt (1983). The study applies qualitative research with sixth semester academic year 2012 of English Department in Faculty of Letters of Jember University as the object. This study deals with interlanguage pragmatics of speech act which focuses on study of linguistic commands.