A case study of women’s language used by michelle obama and oprah nghiên cứu Điển hình về ngôn ngữ của phụ nữ Được michelle obama và oprah winfrey sử dụng trong phỏng vấn tour du lịch tầm nhìn oprah 2020

A case study of women’s language used by michelle obama and oprah nghiên cứu Điển hình về ngôn ngữ của phụ nữ Được michelle obama và oprah winfrey sử dụng trong phỏng vấn tour du lịch tầm nhìn oprah 2020

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION

GRADUATION PAPER

A CASE STUDY OF WOMEN’S LANGUAGE USED BY MICHELLE OBAMA AND OPRAH WINFREY IN THE OPRAH 2020 VISION TOUR

INTERVIEW

Supervisor: Phạm Thị Hạnh (Ph.D)Student: Phùng Ngọc Anh

Course: QH2018.F1.E2.SP.CLC

HÀ NỘI – NĂM 2022

ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH

KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP

NGHIÊN CỨU ĐIỂN HÌNH VỀ NGÔN NGỮ CỦA PHỤ NỮ ĐƯỢC MICHELLE OBAMA VÀ OPRAH WINFREY SỬ DỤNG TRONG PHỎNG VẤN TOUR DU LỊCH TẦM NHÌN OPRAH 2020

Giáo viên hướng dẫn: Phạm Thị Hạnh (Ph.D)Sinh viên: Phùng Ngọc Anh

Khóa: QH2018.F1.E2.SP.CLC

HÀ NỘI – YEAR 2022

ACCEPTANCE PAGE

I hereby state that I: Phùng Ngọc Anh, QH.2018.F1.E2, being a candidate forthe degree of Bachelor of Arts accept the requirements of the College relating to theretention and use of Bachelor's Graduation Paper deposited in the library

In accordance with these terms, I agree that the source of my work deposited inthe library should be accessible for study and research purposes, subject to the regularconditions specified by the librarian for the paper's care, lending, or replication

Signature

Date:

04/05/2022

I want to express my warmest appreciation to everyone who made this workpossible They assisted me greatly throughout the process With their comments,suggestions and brilliant comments, my thesis was much more enjoyable to write

I would like to give special thanks to my supervisor Mrs Pham Thi Hanh forher unfailing encouragement and constructive comments throughout all stages of thestudy Her guidance and support greatly contributed to the development of mygraduation paper

Special thanks to the other teachers at the Faculty of Linguistics and Cultures ofEnglish-Speaking Countries for their encouragement, support, and constructivefeedback

Sincere gratitude to the members of the University of Languages andInternational Studies’ libraries for providing me with all the well-equipped facilitiesand adequate materials for the need of my research

Last but not least, I am extremely grateful for my family and friends for theirmoral support and encouragement throughout the research

Since the seventeenth century, it has been believed that women’s language lackscertainty (Lakoff, 1973) and women own cooperative communication styles (Coastes,2004; Coastes, 2015) To test these two hypotheses in high-status women'sconversation, this sociolinguistic study used a descriptive qualitative method toexamine the forms and functions of language features used by Oprah Winfrey andMichelle Obama in the Oprah Winfrey's 2020 Vision Tour's live talk show withMichelle Obama to determine the type of language language (facilitative or tentative)(Holmes, 1984; Lakoff, 1973) and communication styles (Coastes, 2004) used by highsocial status women This study focused on four key elements: lexical hedges, tagquestions, interruptions, and back-channeling responses (Coastes, 2015; Lakoff, 1973 ).Overall, the study found that both Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama communicatedcooperatively through their usage of collaborative functions of the aforementioned fourlanguage features, which supported Coastes’s (2004) theory on women’s cooperativecommunication style Besides, the findings also indicated that lexical hedges, fillers,and tag questions not only served to express uncertainty but also to emphasizesolidarity between speakers, which contradicted Lakoff's theory of women's languagebeing tentative Additionally, the findings suggest that each linguistic element has aparticular purpose depending on the situation's context and the speaker's aim Due tothe changes in women's roles and societal circumstances since the 17th century, itappears that additional research is required to enhance the researcher's conclusions

TABLE OF CONTENTS

2 Statement of research problem and research questions 1

1.3 Studies on high social status women’s tentative language 8

1.3.3 Debate on the function of tentative language 11

1.4.3 Related studies on conversation strategies affecting the use women's

3.1.1.1 Frequency and types of lexical hedges/ fillers 25

3.3 Discussion on function of women’s tentative language 38

APPENDIX E: TRANSCRIPTION AND COLOR-CODED ELEMENTS 78APPENDIX F: FULL TRANSCRIPT OF OPRAH WINFREY’S INTERVIEW

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

Table 1.1 Functions of women’s language proposed by Holmes (2001） 12

Table 3.1 Frequency of types and functions of Lexical hedges employed

by Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey 25

Table 3.2 Distribution of you know by function by Michelle Obama and

Table 3.3 Distribution of like by function by Michelle Obama and Oprah

Table 3.4 Distribution of I think/ I believe/ I feel by function by Michelle

Table 3.5 Distribution of I mean by function by Michelle Obama and

Table 3.6 Distribution of sort of/kind of by function by Michelle Obama

Table 3.7 Distribution of well of by function by Michelle Obama and

Table 3.8 Classification on functions of lexical hedges 32

Table 3.9 Functions of tag questions by Michelle Obama and Oprah

Table 3.10 Types of interruptions employed by Michelle and Oprah 39

Table 3.11 Functions of interruptions employed by Oprah and Michelle 40

Table 3.12 Types and functions of verbal backchannel responses used by

Figure 3.1 Frequency of interruptions used by Michelle Obama and Oprah

60

Table B1 Functions of tag questions proposed by Janet Holmes (1984) 67

Table C1 Types of interruptions proposed by Ferguson (1977, as cited in

Table C2 Functions of interruptions adapted by Murata (1994) and

Table D1 Forms and functions of backchanneling responses proposed by

Table E1 An observation data sheet on Lexical Hedges/Fillers performed

by Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey 78Table E2 An observation data sheet on Tag questions performed by

Table E3 An observation data sheet on Interruptions performed by

Table E4 An observation data sheet on Backchannel responses

performed by Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey 121

This chapter presents brief information about the current research Thisoverview includes five main points which are (1) background of the study, (2)statement of research problem and questions, (3) scope of the study, (4) significance ofthe study and (5) organization of the study

1 Background of the study

Language is a system of oral and written communication used by the inhabitants

of a given country (Bull, 2011) Language is essential in human life as it is a mediumfor people to communicate and share information In other words, it plays an importantrole in communication and interaction Communication is an act of transferringinformation and message between people (Hermen et al., 2021) According to Holmes(2013), the way people engage with one another is influenced by the social context inwhich they are communicating, which includes gender

Since the 1960s, the relationship between language and gender has been one ofthe primary concerns in sociolinguistics Lakoff (1973), known as the pioneer of thisfield, claimed that while men’s language was dominant and assertive, women’slanguage was mostly associated with uncertainty and hesitation Although the studywas criticized for feminist bias, lack of empirical data, and reliance on personalobservation, Lakoff’s theory about women’s language has been perceived as the initialframework for future researchers Since then, linguists, anthropologists, sociologists,and even psychologists have investigated features of women's language in everydaycommunication and have sought to elucidate the underlying causes from a variety ofperspectives

2 Statement of research problem and research questions

There has been some research looking at women’s language; however, some ofthese studies had a common methodological flaw: they all concentrated on the

differences between men and women's language without considering other variablessuch as age, social status, ethnicity To be specific, following Lakoff's (1973), severalresearch supporting Lakoff's theory on women’s language claimed that women'slanguage was characterized by a predominance of the following linguistics forms oftentative language: lexical hedges and fillers, tag questions, rising intonation ondeclaratives, empty adjectives, specialized vocabularies (precise color terms),intensifier, hypercorrect grammar, super polite form, avoidance of strong swear wordsand emphatic stress However, those studies following Lakoff’s theory were conductedonly in male female discourse As a result, it is questionable whether this theory onwomen's language could be applied in the same sex female conversations Besides,previous studies on women’s language also proved that other variables such as thesetting of the study, speakers' social status should be taken into account rather than justquantify gender differences in the use of certain linguistic features ( Faizah &Kurrniawan, 2016; O'Barr & Atkins, 1980) Furthermore, such results were made in thelate twentieth century, and they may be out of date and invalid when applied to today'ssociety According to Merchant (2012), feminism movement has existed since the lateeighteenth century and has gone through three major phases Each of these waves aided

in the abolition of gender discrimination in numerous spheres of a woman's life(Merchant, 2012) Thus, it was believed that the theories about gender language wereonly accurate in a society where women were in powerless positions than men.Particularly, in this modern society, women’s position is now equal to men’s position;thus, the use of language among women may not be consistent with such results.Recently, there have been some studies on high social status women's language (Badari

& Setyowati, 2019; Hermen et al., 2021; Rohmah, 2021; Sirega & Suastra, 2020;Wardani & Krtiani, 2017) However, few articles investigated in both language formsand communication styles in same sex conversation (Kartika & Rusnaningtias, 2017).Due to these reasons, the researcher would like to investigate in high social status

women’s both language forms and communication styles in their same sexconversation.

Regarding language forms, Lakoff's (1973) theory stated that women's usage oftentative language, which made them seem powerless and uncertain of their utterances,resulted from their lower status in society However, these ten linguistic forms oftentative language were considered as positive interactional approaches It enabledwomen to gain influence over males while still adhering to gender standards andconventions (Carli, 1990; Fishman, 1978, Holmes, 1984; Holmes, 1986) Recentresearch has examined Lakoff's theory of women's language; however, they all focused

on the frequency women employed these language forms rather than on their functions.Thus, based on Lakoff’s model, the researcher investigated Michelle Obama and OprahWinfrey’s language in their same sex conversation to examine the validity of herhypothesis on the function of tentative speech form (see more details in section 1.3.1).Due to the researcher's time and resource constraints as well as the fact that there aredifferent views on the functions of lexical hedges, fillers and tag questions, theresearcher focused exclusively on these three linguistic forms Thus, the study sought

to answer the following question:

1 Which type of language (tentative or facilitative) did Oprah Winfrey andMichelle Obama employ in the Oprah Winfrey’s 2020 Vision talk show?

In order to answer this question to determine whether Oprah and Michelle’s language istentative or facilitative, the research aimed to investigate the types and functions ofthree tentative language feature, namely lexical hedges, fillers and tag question used byMichelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey in the Oprah Winfrey’s 2020 Vision talk show

In terms of communication style, it is believed that women own cooperativecommunication styles, while men own competitive communication style (Coaste, 2004;Coaste, 2015; Tannen, 1993) Little research has been conducted to study high socialstatus women’s conversational strategies (Rohma, 2021) Thus, further investigation in

high social status women language is required to examine this hypothesis To gain acomplete understanding of this subject, the research attempted to answer the followingquestion:

2 Which type of communication style do Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfreyuse in the Oprah Winfrey’s 2020 Vision talk show?

In order to study women's cooperative communication style, Coates (2015)suggested focusing on these relevant factors: topic and topic development,back-channel responses, hedges; questions, turn-taking patterns Due to lack of timeand resource constraints, in order to answer the above-mentioned question, theresearcher investigated two factors only, namely back-channel responses andinterruptions It should be noted that interruptions were related to turn-taking patternsbecause they were said to be a violation of conversational turn-taking rules (Coates,2015) Besides, interruption was believed to be connected to men's competitivecommunication style as it was seen as more assertive and masculine (Coaste, 2004).However, Faizah and Kurniawan's (2016) finding shows that women employedinterruptions more than male ones in Mata Najwa talk-show Thus, it is doubtfulwhether women utilize interruption to employ cooperative or competitivecommunication styles Therefore, in order to gain a complete understanding of thissubject as well as to determine high social status women's communication style, theauthor seek to explore Oprah and Michelle’s communication style through theinvestigation of their use of interruptions and back-channeling responses

3 Scope of the study

The study focused only on Oprah Winfrey’s 2020 Vision talk show withMichelle Obama In detail, the researcher investigated women’s language by studyingEnglish interactions between Oprah and Michelle Obama in a 53- minute video As amatter of fact, this talk show has been chosen primarily due to the researcher’s aim toinvestigate Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey’s language features

4 Significance of the study

Theoretically, this study’s findings were expected to: (1) contributed to the field

of sociolinguistics, particularly on the subject of women’s language in the same sexfemale conversation in terms of both linguistics forms and communicational strategies,(2) enable readers to gain more knowledge on the use of women’s language of highsocial status women in conversation, (3) check whether Lakoff’s theoreticalassumption about women’s language is applicable or not in high social status women'sconversation

Practically, the findings of this research were expected to be useful for: (1) thelecturers in their attempt to enrich their instructional material in the field of linguistics,and (2) implications for the next research who are interested in conducting furtherstudies of women’s language, particularly in conversation

5 Organization

The following chapters are organized correspondingly in this research paper.Chapter 2: Literature review: presented definition of key terms, synthesized andcritically analyzed numerous theories of women’s language in linguistics forms,communication interactions, analytical review of previously related studies and detectresearch gaps

Chapter 3: Methodology: presented information about the research design, setting andparticipants, data collection method and procedures, data analysis method andprocedures

Chapter 4: Findings and Discussions: presented and discussed the findings of theresearch questions

Chapter 5: Conclusion: summarized the findings, suggested implications andlimitations of the study and suggested further studies

Following these chapters are References and Appendix

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter presents definitions of some key terms, synthesizes and criticallyexamines different theories of women's language in the use of linguistics forms andconversation strategies as well as conducting an analytical assessment of prior relatedstudies to identify research gaps

1.1 Language and gender

Language and gender is a multidisciplinary field of research that studies howgender, the interaction between men and women, and sexual orientation affecteddifferent dialects of the same language Recent years have seen a resurgence of debatesabout the definition of the term "gender." To understand this term, it was suggested thatone should distinguish “gender" from “sex" While sex referred to biologicaldifferences between males and females (ex: sexual organs, hormones) and are assigned

at birth, gender was not born but created (West & Zimmerman, 1975) I concurredwith the concept that gender was not always determined by biological sex, but rather

by identification and how we felt about ourselves Thus, it could be said that genderwas not simply about physical or physiological differences between men and women,but also about the manifestation of psychological, social, and cultural differences.Gender could be expressed in a variety of ways, such as how we dress, style our hairand communicate with people (Sex and gender, n.d.)

In fact, gender was a significant social aspect that determines how individualsinteract (Wardhaugh, 2010) Men and women who shared the same language madesimilar choices, used similar terminology, and assumed similar positions According toTrudgill (2000), this phenomenon of gender differentiation in language developed as aresult of the close link between social attitudes and language Similarly, the way people

communicate was related to their roles, behaviors, activities, and gender (Holmes,2006) In other words, distinct social classes in the society assigned men and womenvarious social positions and established various behavioral expectations of them.

In the study of language and gender, differences between men and women’slanguage have been investigated In the dominance approach, Lakoff (1975) stated thatwomen were more prone to show reluctance in their speech as a reflection of men’sdominance and women’s subordination Meanwhile, in the difference approach, ratherthan reflecting a disparity in power, women's speech reflects the distinct norms thatmen and women have for conversational interactions To be specific, men’s style ofspeech is competitive, while women’s is cooperative (Coastes, 1986; Holmes, 2013;Tannen, 1990) Whichever approach was employed, both examined differences inmen's and women's language in a variety of areas, including pronunciation, intonation,vocabulary, grammar, topic selection, and speech functions

1.2 Language and power

Language and power were concerned with how language functions to preserveand change power relations in society, as well as how to comprehend these processes inorder to empower individuals to oppose and change them (Fairclough, 2001) For thisreason, the dominance of men over women in society reflected their interactionalpatterns, with men dominant and women subordinate (Kunsmann, 1998; Wardhaugh,2010) As a result, women had a different way of speaking from men that disqualifiedwomen from positions of power and authority (Lakoff, 1973)

Besides gender equality, social status could be a factor affecting the use oflanguage O'Barr and Atkins (1980) conducted a study in which they questionedwitnesses regarding the ten fundamental speech differences between men and womenproposed by Lakoff (1975) Their findings indicated that the frequency of Lakoff’swomen's language features in their participants' speech did not correlate with gender,but with their social status Thus, they suggested that women's language was really just

a broad term for powerless language, and it was only gendered because women weremore frequently in powerless positions than males For this reason, gender disparitieswere discovered to be oversimplified, hence, gender differences in language were to beseen across socioeconomic class divides, according to sociolinguists One of theirfindings was that middle-class women tended to use more standard forms (those seen

as more prestigious by society), whilst working-class men tended to use morenon-standard forms (those considered less prestigious by society) (Labov, 1966;Trudgill et al., 1974)

1.3 Studies on high social status women’s tentative language

1.3.1 Tentative language

In the field of women’s language, regarding language form, it was believed thatwomen tended to use tentative language, which resulted from their lower status insociety Tentative language has been defined as a technique for downplaying a remark

by making the speaker appear less direct and uncertain about his or her words (Lakoff,1973) As mentioned in section 1.2, her theory claimed that women's language wascharacterized by a predominance of the following linguistics features of tentativelanguage: lexical hedges and fillers, tag questions, rising intonation on declaratives,empty adjectives, specialized vocabularies (precise color terms), intensifier,hypercorrect grammar, super polite form, avoidance of strong swear words andemphatic stress Due to a lack of time and resources, this research would focus oninvestigating three linguistic features: lexical hedges, fillers, and tag questions

The following paragraphs then presented the definitions of these three languagetypes as well as synthesized research on women's use of them

1.3.2 Lexical Hedges and Fillers

In this section, theories about lexical hedges and fillers as well as previousstudies on the usage of these linguistic forms were presented below

a Definition

Hedges is a form of verbal filler that serves to soften the impact of a speech.According to Pearson (1985), verbal fillers were utilized when a speaker filled in apause in their discussion In the study of gender language, Lakoff claimed that womentended to use more hedges to express their uncertainty than males Regarding types ofhedges, Lakoff (2004) distinguished four distinct types of hedges The first type is used

to convey ambiguity, such as “you know, well, sort of/sort of” The second category ishedges used for politeness, such as “sorta/sort of” The third type is to communicatethe speaker's certainty about the truth of a statement in order to capture the listener'sattention, for example, “you know” The final type served as a preamble to assertions

or queries, such as “I suppose, I guess, I wonder, I think” Besides, the employment ofhedges, which is frequently utilized as filler objects, could also be combined with otherfiller pauses, such as “uh” and “uhm” These kinds of filler items might be used by thespeakers if they were unsure of what they are saying (Swerts & Hirschberg, 2010)

b Studies

Regarding the studies on women and men’s usage of lexical hedges, hedges (Ibelieve, I'm sure, you know, sort of, probably) were included in the book Women, Menand Language (Coates, 1993), which sought to examine the way in which women andmen generally draw on different techniques in conversational strategies inconversational engagement The findings suggested that women employed morehedges than males Additionally, numerous research studies have proven that femaleparticipants used more hedging devices than male participants (Carli, 1990; Mc Millian

et al., 1977) In terms of high social status women's usage of lexical hedges and fillers,there have been some examining their usage of these linguistic forms in the form ofboth speech and conversation There has been some research on high-status women'suse of lexical hedges and fillers in both speech and conversation Wardani and Kristiani(2017) and Badari and Setyowati (2019) both conducted studies on Michelle Obama'sspeeches and discovered that lexical hedges and fillers were employed in her speech.However, neither of these two studies was able to explain how this linguistics

functioned, whether it increased the force of Michelle's voice or not Similarly, Kartikaand Rusnaningtias (2017), in their study of Oprah Winfrey's language in same-sexconversations, focus exclusively on the frequency with which she employs lexicalhedges without delving into their function as conversation techniques.

Therefore, to address this gap, this research would examine the functions oflexical hedges and fillers used by both Michelle and Oprah in order to determine if theyfunctioned as tentative or facilitative language

1.3.3 Tag question

Another tentative speech form that worths analyzing is tag questions This

section would discuss the definition of tag questions, different types and functions oftag questions, and past research on the use of this language form

a Definition

A tag question was a question that is attached to an utterance Tag questionswere formal definitions of grammatical structures in which a declarative clause wasfollowed by an interrogative clause or 'tag' According to Lakoff (1973), womenfrequently converted a statement into a question in order to weaken the statement'simpact When the speaker is unsure about the subject being discussed, tag questionscan be used such as “She is very nice, isn’t she?” While Lakoff asserted that the use oftag questions diminished the force of an assertion by making the speaker appearinsecure, Holmes (1984) confirmed that tag questions can serve a variety of socialfunctions in conversation directed at either the speaker or the address, rather thansimply being an indicator of the speaker's lack of assertiveness According to Holmes(1984), tag questions express two meanings: modal and affective meanings On theone hand, tags with modal meaning, such as requesting confirmation, agreement,indicates speakers’ hesitation and a demand for confirmation On the other hand,

“addressee-oriented’”tags could be further differentiated into “facilitative” or

“softening” tags, depending on the tag's goal In contrast to ‘softening’ tags, whichconvey politeness or the speaker's concern for recipients’ feeling, “facilitative” tags

demonstrate the speaker's solidarity with a favorable attitude toward the recipient.Similarly, Holmes (1986), studying on men's and women's conversational usage of tagquestions, also shared the same idea on functions of tag questions with Holmes (1984).His study concluded that tag questions had three purposes in which the first one was toindicate the speaker's hesitation and demand for confirmation The second purpose was

to demonstrate the speaker's solidarity with a favorable attitude toward the recipientand the third purpose served to express politeness and to soften statements

b Studies

Contrary to Lakoff's theory on women's tendency to use tag questions, Wardaniand Kristiani’s (2017) research revealed that Michelle did not utilize tag questions intheir speeches Similarly, Badari and Setyowati (2019) demonstrated that MichelleObama used the tag question only once during her speech, with the purpose ofexpressing her insecurity Meanwhile, Siregar and Suastra (2020), who used Lakoff'stheory to analyze Hilary Clinton's speech during the 2016 First Presidential Debate,stated that Hilary employed lexical hedges in her speech However, the studyconcentrated on the frequency of linguistic elements rather than explaining theirexistence or absence in Hilary's speech

As can be observed, the purpose of the tag question used by women of highsocial rank needs additional examination Due to the scarcity of research undertaken inthe context of conversation, this study would examine the usage of tag questions bytwo high social status women in order to determine the function of this linguistic form

1.3.3 Debate on the function of tentative language

Though Lakoff has provided an initial theoretical framework on the definition ofwomen’s language, her absence of empirical evidence created an opportunity foradditional inquiry into her substantive arguments For a long time, Lakoff's theory ofwomen’s language function, which unified 10 women's language traits, has been thesubject of debate Holmes (2001), who provided a clearer explanation for Lakoff’sfunctional coherence unified her list of features, divided the list of features into two

groups: hedges and boosters While hedges were used to hedge or lessen the force of aspeech, boosters served to boost or amplify a proposition's face Table 1.1 illustrated alist of ten linguistic forms classified by functions given by Holmes.

Super polite forms

Precise color terms

Contrary to Holmes's (2001) theory, Lakoff claimed that both hedges andboosters only expressed women’s lack of confidence, which also conflicted with somescholars’ conclusions Carli (1990), who expanded on Lakoff's assertions on women'stendency for tentative language as an interactional technique, supports Lakoff'sassertions about women's use of tentative language (in terms of tags, hedges, anddisclaimers) Her findings, however, refuted Lakoff's assertion that women's tentativespeaking reduces their chances of being regarded seriously Rather than that, Carliunderlined the importance of speaking tentatively as a positive interactional approachsince it enables women to gain influence over males while still adhering to genderstandards and conventions This hypothesis was also supported by Holmes (1984) andFishman (1978), who considered women’s language facilitators to maintainconversation Holmes (1984) made a pointed critique of Lakoff's assumption thatwomen's use of tag questions was an indicator of insecurity While she concurred withLakoff regarding women's proclivity for tag questions, she viewed them as practicalfacilitative devices rather than evidence of female repression Similarly, while Fishmanalso supported Lakoff’s theory that women used questions and hedges more than men,

she explained that women use questions and hedges to facilitate conversations Ingeneral, while these researchers generally agreed with Lakoff that women'sconversational strategies reflected societal gender imbalances, their findings indicatedthat women were facilitators and supportive conversationalists, not nervous, tentativecommunicators.

1.3.4 Facilitative language

Thus, this led to the emergence of another term “facilitative language”.Facilitative language could be defined as a way to support other speakers andemphasize solidarity with other speakers Contrary to tentative language, which werespeaker-oriented, facilitative language was believed to be hearer-oriented

As indicated previously in Section 1.3.3, there has been considerable discussionabout the purpose of women's language, whether tentative or facilitative To addressthis issue, this study would explore the types and roles of three distinct language forms,namely lexical hedges, fillers, and tag questions, used by Michelle Obama and OprahWinfrey

1.4 Studies on women’s communication style

In the studies of women’s language, apart from Lakofff's idea of women'slanguage forms, Coaste (2004) advanced another notion of women's communicationstyle In this section, definition of communication, theories of communication style aswell as studies on women’s communication styles were discussed below

messages, yet it did not necessitate the participation of two parties This distinguishes itfrom conversation, which is a two-way affair between two parties.

1.4.2 Communication style

a Definition of communication style

Regarding communication style, it was considered “the way one verbally,

nonverbally, and paraverbal interacts to signal how literal meaning should be taken,interpreted, filtered, or understood'' (Norton, 1983, p.11) Individuals from differentregions of the country, ethnic groups, or social classes might be unable to communicate

in the manner in which they intended due to the variations in their communicationstyles (Tannen, 1986) However, it should be mentioned that communication style was

a personal choice and that no one style was superior to another because it was

something we constantly learn and grow (Giri, 2004)

b Classification of communication style

● Competitive communication style

In a competitive conversation, participants attempted to grab their conversationwheels and fight for their status (Coaste, 2004) Coaste asserted that men wereassociated with competitive style because they preferred monolog and one-at-a-timefloor-holding routines, which enabled them to play the expert in the conversation One

of the strategies that was connected to the competitive style was interruption as it wasseen as more assertive and masculine (Coaste, 2004) Meanwhile, Tannen (1991)pointed out that interruptions could be both collaborative and competitive depending

on the relationship and the subject matter Other conversation factors that could be used

to investigate men’s competitive style were “topic choice, monologuing and playingthe expert; questions, verbal sparring, and turn-taking patterns” (Coaste, 2015,p.133)

● Cooperative communication style

According to Coates (2004), participants in a collaborative conversation built onone another's good ideas, assisted other speakers and used language to highlight their

solidarity with the other participant The conversation strategy “back-channelresponse” was said to be associated with collaborative floors as it signaled speakerswere present and involved Another significant strategy which formed part of thecooperative floor was overlap Overlap occurred most commonly in all-femalediscourse, and was frequently beneficial (Tannen, 1993) Besides, Tannen claimed thatwomen’s preference to discuss personal topics such as their families and friends andintroduce new topics without hesitation was connected to collaborative communicationstyle Recently, Coates (2015) suggested that a study investigating women'scooperative discourse can focus on these relevant factors: topic and topicdevelopment, back-channel responses, hedges; questions, turn-taking patterns.

1.4.3 Related studies on conversation strategies affecting the use of women's

communication style.

As mentioned before in the section 1.4.2, to study communication style, one can

focus on these conversation strategies: “topic and topic development, back-channel

responses, hedges; questions; turn-taking patterns; interruption; topic choice;monologuing and playing the expert; questions and verbal sparring” (Coates,2015,p.133) Due to time and resource restrictions, the researcher examined only twoconversation strategies, namely back-channel responses and interruptions, to ascertainMichelle Obama's and Oprah Winfrey's communication styles

The following paragraphs then defined and classified interruptions,back-channel responses and synthesized evidence on their use by high social statuswomen

1.4.4 Interruptions

a Definition and classification of interruptions

Interruptions occurred when an interactant began speaking before the presentspeaker had finished his turn (James & Clarke, 1993) Regarding types of interruptions,Ferguson (1977, as cited in Beattie, 1982) categorized interruptions into four types:simple interruption, overlapping interruption, butting in interruption, and silent

interruption Simple interruption occurred once an interrupter took the floor when thecurrent speaker still uncompleted his/her sentence Secondly, overlapping interruptionoccurred when both speakers spoke at the same time In this case, the first speakercontinued to speak while the interrupter attempted to take the floor Thirdly, butting-ininterruption occurred when an interrupter attempted to intrude on the current speaker'sturn Nonetheless, the speaker continued speaking and was unconcerned about theinterrupter Silent interruption was the last type of interruption that occurred when theinitial speaker paused before concluding his or her utterances.

In terms of interruption functions, interruptions were frequently regarded ascompetitive, as they were assumed to involve a high probability of dominance.However, there was no firm evidence to indicate that interruption constituted adominance attempt Many other researchers found that interruptions frequently had asupportive or cooperative function in conversation Murata (1994) mentions twofunctions, they were cooperative and intrusive interruption Murata (1994) contendedthat cooperative interruption aided the speaker by coordinating the conversation'scontent; whereas, intrusive interruption imposed threats on the other conversationalistswhich impeded the flow and topic matter of the continuing debate Later on, based onMurata’s theory, Kennedy and Camden (1983) provided more three sub functions incooperative interruption, which are agreement, assistance, clarification and foursubfunctions of intrusive interruptions, which includes disagreement, floor taking,topic change and tangentialization

b Studies on women's use of interruptions

Many studies have identified interruptions from different perspectives to studywomen’s communication style For instance, Zimmerman and West (1975) onlycounted the number of occurrences of interruptions; meanwhile, Beattie (1982)identified interruptions in relation to their context Zimmerman and West (1975), whoinvestigated in women’s interruptions in mixed-sex conversation, supported thehypothesis of women’s cooperative communicative style in communication

interactions One research that supports Zimmerman and West’s viewpoint isNordenstam's paper "Male versus female conversational style" in 1992 Nordenstam’sresults showed that when women conversed with each other, they employedcooperative overlap to utilize a high-involvement approach in the conversation.Similarly, Deborah Tannen (1993) described female communication style ashigh-involvement style because her findings suggested that women were likely toemploy cooperative interruptions On the contrary, Faizah and Kurniawan's (2016)research reported that female speakers showed higher frequency of interruptions thanthe male ones in Mata Najwa talk-show Overall, the above conflicting findings might

be attributed to the inconsistency in the methodology and the setting of the study.Additionally, the results of women’s domination in Faizah and Kurrniawan (2016) may

be rooted from the history that women in Indonesia have been equally treated from thebeginning Thus, interruptions, like all other linguistic traits, are contextually andsocially related

Regarding high social status women' use of interruptions, only Rohmah (2021)explored types and functions of Hilary Clinton’s interruptions in presidential debates.The analysis of the results revealed that Hilary avoids interruptions, indicating that hercommunication technique is more collaborative in nature This contradicts Faizah andKurniawan's (2016) conclusion that female speakers in the Mata Najwa talk showexperienced a higher rate of interruptions than male speakers

The contradiction in the aforementioned findings demonstrated that the study ofinterruptions should be contextualized in terms of the setting of the study and thespeakers' social status To acquire a better understanding of how high-status women useinterruptions, the research would examine the functions of interruptions in a casualconversation between Michelle and Oprah with an aim to determine theircommunication style

1.4.5 Backchannel responses

a Definition and classification of backchannel responses

In contrast to interruptions, a backchannel response was defined as one in whichthe speaker did not attempt to seize control of the floor but rather gave context for theinterlocutor's comment (e.g., "mm," "yeah," etc) (Mott & Petrie, 1995) Back-channelanswers were usually seen as indicating agreement with or interest in the speaker'sstatements (Bilous & Krauss, 1988; Fishman, 1977) One point that should be clarifiedwas that backchannels had nothing to do with speaker shift Although backchannelswere within the turn-taking category, they did not involve any change of conversationalturns (Duncan, 1972).

Using theories proposed by Maynard (1997), Heinz (2003) examined the

disparities between backchannel responses in the United States and Germany Verbaland nonverbal backchannel reaction could be classified by Heinz (2003) into two

distinct types of backchannel response The verbal backchannel reaction of a listenercould take the form of a lexical item, word, phrase, or even a complete sentence

Non-verbal backchannel responses, on the other hand, were those elicited by the use offacial expressions, gestures, and motions such as head nods, head shakes, shouldershrugs, and eye gazes Recently, Umaporn (2006) adopted Heinz's theory to the Monlanguage, which is a Thai dialect He classified verbal backchannel responses into 6types: repetition, short question and answer, short verbalization, lexical item, phrase,sentence However, as backchannel behavior depended on the culture and the linguisticsystem (Heinz, 2003), it is doubtful that these characteristics of backchannel are inother languages

b Studies on women's usage of backchannel responses

Numerous studies have been undertaken to determine how men and women usebackchannels Lakoff adapted backchannels in her 1975 book "Women's Language”into hedges, super polite forms, tag questions, rising intonation on declaratives, emptyadjectives, specific color terms, intensifiers, hypercorrect' grammar, super polite forms,and the avoidance of harsh swear words to demonstrate that women appear to be morecourteous, uncertain, submissive, and reluctant than men On the other hand,

Pluszczyk's (2013) study on the incidence of backchannels and interruptions amongstudents aged 20-25 with an English language major emphasized that “backchannels donot have to be associated with the speech of females, it was typical of the speech ofboth males and females" (p.14) According to Coaste (2015), women used backchannel

to indicate their active listening and support for one another Additionally, femalespeakers used backchannel to convey their acceptance of certain stages of a discourse,such as accepting a new topic or acknowledging a topic's conclusion

Little research has been conducted to study high social status women's usage ofbackchannel response Therefore, in order to comprehend the use of backchannelresponses as well as to determine communication styles of Michelle Obama and OprahWinfrey, the research would investigate types and functions of backchannel responsesemployed in their conversation

1.5 Summary and research gap

Overall, as can be seen, studies on some different linguistic forms andconversation strategies show diametrically opposed and dissimilar outcomes Besides,several articles examining gendered language all shared a common methodologicalflaw: they all focused on the differences between men and women's language on theassumption that men and women were distinct groups This, I argue, is problematicbecause the groups of men and women contain a great deal of internal variance As hasbeen mentioned earlier in the above sub-section (1.2), O'Barr and Atkins’ (1980)research showed that Lakoff’s linguistic features were used by the powerless in societyrather than women exclusively Previous studies on women's use of interruptions alsoproved that the study of interruptions should be associated with the setting of the study.Thus, it is suggested that the study of women’s language should be taken into accountwith the speaker's social status, the setting of conversation rather than just quantifygender differences in the use of certain linguistic features

Regarding studies of high social status women’s language, as can be seen, interms of speech, using Lakoff’s theory, the outcomes of the high social status ofwomen in some studies varied in their usage of lexical hedges and tag questions.However, because the speeches were already scripted, the results of the use oflinguistic features were insufficiently validated to test Lakoff's hypothesis aboutwomen's language In detail, given the empowering and persuasive nature of theirspeech, it was likely that the script avoided powerless linguistic features in advance.Besides, this research only focused on the frequency of lexical hedges and tagquestions they employed without investigating their functions Regarding conversationanalysis, few studies have investigated women with high social status’s language’sdifferent conversation strategies Furthermore, due to the differences in the utilization

of the frameworks, the findings of these studies were not comparable to verify thehypothesis of women’s collaborative communication style

In general, the literature study revealed that there are certain gaps that needed to

be filled First of all, the question whether the functions of tentative speech (lexicalhedges, fillers, tag questions) were used as facilitators or a marker of uncertainty andinsecurity in high social status women’s language needs to be answered Secondly,little research has been conducted to study high social status women’s conversationalstrategies Only Rohma (2021), using Ferguson’s (1977, as cited in Beattie, 1982)concept of the interruption types theory of interruptions, supported the concept ofwomen’s cooperative communicative style Thus, further investigation on otherconversational strategies is required to examine this hypothesis Another noteworthyfeature was the study's limited number of model and hypothesis combinations fromvarious experts Combinations could be used to provide a more complete picture of thetopic being studied Therefore, the current study would like to investigate two highsocial status women’s language in conversation following Lakoff's model to examinethe validity of her hypothesis on the function of tentative speech (lexical hedges, fillers,tag questions) Moreover, to verify the hypothesis that women possess cooperative

communicative styles, the researcher also examined other components ofconversational techniques, including back channel, interruption, and the three linguisticqualities described previously.

of the participants’ usage of language forms and conversational strategies in the chosendata Meanwhile, a quantitative approach was adopted to measure the frequency of theuse of each conversational strategy.

This study employed conversation analysis (CA) to examine the interactionalprocesses that happened during Oprah Winfrey's live talk show with Michelle Obama

on her 2020 Vision Tour Conversation Analysis was used since it is capable ofelucidating and describing the types and functions of selected conversationaltechniques used during a talk show interview

2.2 Data and source of data

Oprah Winfrey's 2020 Vision Tour’s live talk show with Michelle was selected

as the object of the research as talk shows had rarely been chosen to be analyzedbefore At that moment, though having left the White House, Michelle Obama and herhusband both still remained in political life, including campaigning for President JoeBiden In the fifty-four-minute video, the former US First Lady Michelle Obama

discussed her family's life after the White House and her newly published book

“Becoming”, and shared her thoughts about aging with Oprah Winfrey Since the videowas set unscripted, the usage of linguistic features was authentic and realistic Thevideo and the script transcription were provided by Weight Watchers (2020)

Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama were chosen to be the participants of thestudy as they were considered two high social status women Michelle Obama was thefirst African American first lady and the wife of Barack Obama, the 44th President ofthe United States According to Forbes Magazine's yearly list of the world's mostpowerful women, she was believed to be the most powerful woman in the world.About Oprah Winfrey, she was an American television personality, actress, andentrepreneur, best known for her syndicated daily talk show, which was one of thegenre's most popular Besides, she also became one of the richest and most influentialwomen in the United States (Britannica, 2022)

2.3 Data collection procedure

The research used three steps to collect the data for the research First, theresearcher downloaded the video and the transcript of the interview retrieved onSeptember 29, 2021, from https://bit.ly/3EQdiHb (see Appendix A) Second, theresearcher printed out the transcript of the interview that had been downloaded Then,the researcher watched the interview several times to check the transcript and addwords or fillers which were not provided to make the data valid and congruent withMichelle and Oprah’s utterances

2.4 Data analysis framework

The theories framework on the types and functions of lexical hedges, fillers, tag

questions, interruptions and backchanneling responses were presented in Appendix A,

B, C, D

2.5 Data analysis instruments

Some data sheets were utilized to classify the collected data of linguisticfeatures and conversation strategies (according to the theories displayed fromAppendix A to Appendix D) (see Appendix E for more details)

In general, the data, which included the number of data, time of data, theutterances containing targeted language form, functions and explanation for thefunctions were categorized in some data sheets Besides, color-coded techniques wouldalso be employed to highlight specific language forms within utterances To bespecific, the color “dark green”, “yellow”, “light green”, “orange” would be employed

to emphasize fillers, lexical hedges, tag questions and backchannels respectively

2.6 Data analysis procedure

The researcher used a textual analysis approach to analyze the data in this study

A textual analysis was a technique for assessing the meaning of verbal or nonverbalcues included within certain texts (Vanderstoep & Johnston, 2009) Thus, textualanalysis was employed to identify and evaluate linguistic indicators associated withlexical hedges, tag questions, interrupts, and backchannel responses used by MichelleObama and Oprah Winfrey in this research The following processes were taken toanalyze the data in the research

Step 1: The researcher identified and classified the data using data sheets mentioned in

section (2.5) To validate the collected features, the data was consulted with thesupervisor After the feedback given, the researcher revised the classification followingthe supervisor’s recommendation

Step 2: The researcher counted the frequency and percentage of each category of the

two research problems and presented the data in the form of table and narration

Step 3: The researcher interpreted the results of the data analysis to answer research

problems

Step 4: The researcher summarized the findings of the interpretations in a few

concluding statements To validate the report's findings and interpretation, the findingsand interpretation were discussed with the research supervisors first

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

In this chapter, the findings, analysis and interpretation of the data in terms ofthe frequency of the use of targeted linguistic features, the types as well as thefunctions of linguistic features in Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey’s conversationare presented by the researcher

3.1 Lexical hedges and fillers

The section 3.1 provides detailed information on the findings of the frequencyand types of lexical hedges and fillers, the functions of each lexical hedge and fillers aswell as interpretation of the results

3.1.1 Findings

3.1.1.1 Frequency and types of lexical hedges/ fillers

To analyze the data, first of all, the number of lexical hedges and fillers

produced by Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey was calculated (see Table 3.1

below)

Table 3.1

Frequency of types and functions of Lexical hedges employed by Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey

Lexical Hedges/ Fillers Michelle

Obama Winfrey Oprah Total Percentage (%)

Percentage 94.63 5.37 100

As can be seen from table 3.1, Michelle Obama surpassed Oprah Winfrey interms of the frequency of all forms of lexical hedges and fillers The overall number ofproduced lexical hedges and fillers is 149 To be specific, regarding forms of lexicalhedges and fillers, while Michelle Obama used 9 words of lexical hedges, including

“you know, like, I think, I believe, I feel, I mean, sort of, kind of, well”, Oprah Winfreyonly employed 4 words: “You know, like, I think, I mean”, with the frequency of 2 atmost Besides, the table shows that the most frequent type of lexical hedges employed

by Michelle Obama is “you know”, which takes up to around 50% of the producedlexical hedges Overall, it can be concluded that while Michelle Obama had a tendency

to employ different types of lexical hedges when expressing her opinion, OprahWinfrey rarely utilized lexical hedges in her utterances

3.1.1.2 Functions of you know

When examining deeper into the function of each lexical hegde, the researcheranalyzed the lexical hedge function "you know" based on Holmes' (1984) and Holmes'(1986) theory of lexical hedge functions In detail, hedges can have two meanings:

"modal meaning" – which expresses the speaker's certainty – and "affective meaning,"which expresses the speaker's attitude toward the interaction's addressees

Total 85 2

The figure from table 3.2 shows that the ratio of the first function “expressingconfidence” to the second one “expressing uncertainty” is nearly 1 to 1 Thus, it isapparent that Michelle and Oprah used “you know” to convey both speaker’suncertainty and certainty Regarding the first category, Michelle expressed heruncertainty to convey awareness on the choice of words, require reassurance from theaddressee or to signal her awareness of more precision of her information On theother hand, in the second category, the word “you know” used by Michelle Obamaserved to express her confidence concerning addressee's relevant backgroundknowledge or to simply grab the listener’s attention

3.1.1.3 Functions of like

Regarding the filler “like”, the functions of this filler would be categorizedfollowing Tsukamoto’s (2020) theory on the functions of the filler “like”, which ispresented in the table 3.3 below

addition, the only tentative function “express uncertainty” accounts for 30% of thewords produced by both speakers Besides, the function “describe utterances/ feelings

in the past” employed by Michelle occupies almost 50% percent of the total words sheused

3.1.1.4 Functions of introductory phrase I think/ I believe/ I feel

With respect to some introductory phrases “I think”, “I believe”, “I feel”,

Holmes’ (1984) theory would be employed to categorize two main purposes of theselexical hedges, which included tentative meaning (express uncertainty) and deliberativemeaning (express certainty)

Expressing certainty and adding

weight to the proposition