Women’s Language Features and Functions used by the main character in Barbie Movie

This study aims to examine the features of women’s language and the functions of women’s language used by the main character in Barbie movie. The movie follows the story of the main character, Barbie, as she embarks on a journey of self-discovery from Barbie Land to the real world. The researcher presents two research problems to be solved in this study: (1) What are the women’s language features found in the utterances of the main character in Barbie movie? (2) What are the women’s language functions found in the utterances of the main character in Barbie movie? This study used a descriptive qualitative method. The descriptive study was applied to examine the utterances of the main character in the form of words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. The data were collected from the transcript of the movie. The researcher printed out the transcript then highlighted the main character’s utterances that contains women’s language features. Moreover, the researcher identified and analyzed the data using Lakoff’s theory (1975) of women’s language features, and Pearson’s theory (1985) of women’s language functions. The result of this study revealed that there are 9 features of women’s language found in the main character’s utterances. Those are lexical hedges or fillers, tag questions, rising intonation on declaratives, empty adjectives, intensifiers, hypercorrect grammar, super polite form, avoidance of strong swear words, and emphatic stress. From those findings, the main character in Barbie mostly used intensifiers feature. All features of women’s language are found with the exception of precise color terms. Furthermore, the researcher found 5 functions of women’s language in the main character’s utterances. Those are to express uncertainty, to express feelings or opinion, to get a response, to start a discussion, and to soften an utterance. The function that the main character mostly used is to express feelings or opinion.