GENDER-BASED REQUEST STRATEGIES EMPLOYED BY ENGLISH DEPARTMENT STUDENTS, JEMBER UNIVERSITY ACADEMIC YEAR 2012/2013

Abstract

As a part of society, English Foreign Language (EFL) learners learn how to apply language not only the grammatical rules, but also the pragmatic competence. The pragmatic competence which consists of sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic should be understood in order to produce a meaningful language. Speech act is part of pragmalinguistic. EFL learners have to know how to apply the speech acts properly and politely, especially in applying request. Request is common types of speech acts that is used in daily life. It has relationship with politeness, Face Threatening Act (FTA), and gender. Request is also used to find out whether there are any differences between female and male in producing request and how it is related with relative power and social distance. The data research is collected by role-play. The 16 female students and 16 male students are provided several situations and they have to practice the role-play and produce requests based on the situations given. After doing the role-play, they are interviewed in order to gain the reasons of producing the kinds of requests. The result shows that both female and male students tend to produce Query Prepatory types of request. However, the male students have higher percentage of using Query Prepatory types of request than the female students. The female and male students tend to employ Query Prepatory because this is the only knowledge of polite request that they know. It also means that relative power and social distance do not quite influence them in producing request. Furthermore, based on the result, the male students produce Query Prepatory more often than the female students