LANGUAGE STYLES IN "SNOWPIERCER" (2013): THE INFLUENCE OF SOCIOECONOMIC

Abstract

This study aims to discover the types of language style and also the influence of socioeconomic status in language style through Snowpiercer (2013). Given that this film is told in combination of both high and low SES. At this moment, when viewed from socioeconomic status discourse, language styles used in the interaction between classes are most often different. This study used descriptive qualitative method to analyse the data were the utterances consisting of language styles identified by characters’ dialogues in film. Using Martin Joos’ theory as a guide to classified types of language style, and Oakes and Rossi’s socioeconomic status theory to find out the influence of socioeconomic status, this study found four out five types of language style. The first finding shows that four types were found in this film such as casual, formal, consultative and intimate style. The second finding shows that education is one of the many important factors that influence someone with their socioeconomic status to use a certain types of language style. To conclude, language styles used by characters belonging to the low SES group ranged from casual to intimate. Formal language style was hardly found in dialogue lines of low SES characters with the exception of one character (C9) that served a role as a preacher among low SES characters.

Keywords: language style, socioeconomic status, snowpiercer.