Abstract
This paper deals with gender and communication in terms of different features of women’s speech based on the previous studies done by many sociolinguists. Gender refers to categories that distinguish people based on their socio-cultural behavior, including speech. In their speech, gender-men and women- use different ways to say a similar thing in communication. This paper described women’s and men’s speeches from several studies in a frame of linguistics perspectives. Some different features were compared with the women’s speeches in Minangkabau community that indicates Minangkabau politeness maxims. This paper also describes how Minangkabau culture is different from other cultures in criticizing among native speakers of Minangkabau both direct and indirect. Then, some hedges are used by women as politeness markers to minimize face-threatening acts (FTA), a concept proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987).
Highlights
In any community, women and men talk in different ways
Several studies described the differences of gender in communication; each culture describes the various forms of linguistic varieties that reflect speech function and social values
Whorf postulates that the structure of a language determines the way of thinking of the users,this refers to the strong version-; it refers to language that influences the way of their thinking. (Kramsch, 1998 in Gunarwan, 2005)
Summary
Women and men talk in different ways. For example, women tend to speak by using high intonation and tag questions. Example (1b) shows the use of a given name like Karen, as a reference while talking to people or lecturer is more polite than using ambo, awak ‘I’ because in this community they are not commonly used This indicates the relationship between language and culture is close and bound. We can see that whether the utterances delivered by the speaker will threaten the face, Face threatening Acts (FTA), or the utterances can save the Face (FSA) To make it clear, look at the examples (2-3), in (2) this sentence will be considered as a rude form if it is delivered to our boss, the use of the word saudara and criticize him in front of people will make him ashamed, angry and this threat his face. The different choice of words and strategies used to save the face (FSA) or to minimize face-threatening acts (FTA). (see diagram 1)
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