GENDER COMMUNICATION STYLES IN LAW AND POLITICAL DEBATE OF INDONESIA LAWYERS CLUB (A CASE STUDY)

This research deals with the way of communication styles of male and female guests in law and political debate of Indonesia Lawyers Club. The objectives of this research were to identify the kinds of speech styles that exchanged in law and political debate of Indonesia Lawyers Club by male and female guests, to describe the speech styles used by male and female guests and to explain the reason of male and female guests exchanged the speech styles in the way they are. This research was conducted by applying descriptive qualitative research. The data of this study were 25 utterances of male guests and 37 utterances of female guest which were selected from segment 5 and 6 of Indonesia Lawyers Club on the hot news “Drama Eksekusi Mati: Jokowi di bawah Tekanan” on April 28th 2015 and the last segment on the hot news “DKI-1: Siapa Penantang Ahok?” on March 8th 2016. The findings showed that male guests tend to use rapport talk in delivering their idea in commenting the issue, while female guest tends to use report talk in commenting the issue in Indonesia Lawyers Club. Male guests frequently show the characteristics of female communication, such as: support, intimacy, understanding, feeling, proposal and compromise in their way of commenting the issue, while female guest shows the characteristics of male communication, such as: status, independence, advice, information, orders and conflict in her comment to the issue. The reason of male guests use rapport talk more whereas female guest tends to use report talk more is because males treat the language as a way in selling themselves in a debate, whereas female does it as a way to challenge the male’s ability and experience in law and political issue by being the more aggressive debater.