Female Register in CMC

Abstract

Lakoff (1973) stated that in Face-to-Face (F2F) interaction, females possess certain registers in their language use. Some experts also give supporting information about it; one of them is Harmer (2001) who states that men and women do communicate differently. Along with the development of technology, nowadays people do not only communicate in F2F, but the communication also takes place in Internet. According to Higgins (1991), communication which occurs in the Internet is known as Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC).This study was conducted to find out if female register occurred in CMC. As language is dynamic and studies suggest that CMC has different features from F2F, this research was aimed at identifying the female use of language in CMC environment using Lakoff (1973) framework of Female Register and based on Herring?s (2007) context of online discourse, known as Computer-Mediated Discourse (CMD). In attempting to accomplish the objective, 5 female students of English Language Education Department from the Faculty of Language and Literature, Satya Wacana Christian University, Salatiga participated and the analysis was based on their conversation in Facebook Message. The data was analyzed and elaborated qualitatively. The results indicated that not all characteristics of Female Register found in the conversations. There were only five characteristics used by the participants; the use of Hedges, the use of word „So?,the use of Empty Adjectives, the use of Tag Questions, and the use of Polite Language. The status of the participants as Non-Native English speakers might bethe main reason why not all characteristics found. Although not all characteristics found, it can be concluded that Female Register also occurs in CMC.