Complaint is intrinsically an abusive act which tends to offend the complainees. In spite of this complainers could consider politeness when they still intend to maintain a good relationship with the complainees. This paper investigated politeness strategies involved in complaints relating to different social status levels and social distances. The data of the complaints were elicited through oral discourse completion tasks from 50 Indonesian learners of English consisting of 25 males and 25 females. The findings indicated that most complaints sounded very direct, particularly those addressed to lower-unfamiliar interlocutors. Four politeness strategies of Brown and Levinson (1987) were employed by the learners. Bald on record and Positive politeness were the most pervasive strategies used across status levels and social distances. Negative politeness was comparatively high, but it was not as high as Bald on record and Positive politeness. Off-record was rarely phrased across status levels and social distances.

The article examines the moderator's initiation in Indonesia Lawyers Club (ILC) discussion within the framework of genre analysis. The term sub-genre initiation is one of folded discourses in ILC discussion. The study of the sub-genre initiation is aimed to leverage the audience's response for giving detailed information. The data of utterances are taken purposively based on the richness of information from sessions in ILC discussion during the year 2012 with the selection to 10 available different topics of discussion. The utterances are analyzed by combining the genre analysis paradigm of Swales' about move structure model and the comprehensive pragmatic context. The result shows that the moves as unified structures of functional meaning forming the sub-genre initiation are greeting; recalling past events (by the steps of narrating, establishing opinion, showing emphaty, making analogy, or affirming the fact ect); presenting the topic (by relating the other topics, convincing audience); and addressing the person in concern.

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