Functions of Indirectness in American Idol Judges’ Comments

Abstract

Indirectness is one of the most efficient ways to communicate each other. People use indirectness in communication for different purposes. The most discussed and discovered purpose across cultures is for politeness; people use language in indirect way to prevent hurting other's feelings. In many cultures, indirectness is highly valued because saving face and harmony in social relationships are highly respected. This study is a descriptive study which is aimed at analyzing the functions or the purpose of using indirectness or indirect language in one of the rarely discussed realm of language use, a TV show, specifically, American Idol. The findings also reveal the strategies used in order to perform the functions. The data is limited to the audition of American Idol season eight (8) which was held in 2009. There were 7 recordings for the 8 cities of audition. The total number of data used in this study was 50 indirect comments. The result shows that there were 3 functions of the use of indirectness in the comments of the judges. The functions were (i) being ironic, (ii) being polite, and (iii) giving hints.

Politeness Strategies Used by the Main Character in the Film Onward

“…Different society functions their own normative politeness notion and that apply differently to other societies (Fitriah & Hidayat, 2018;Yuliyawati, 2020). People speak according to the acceptable rules or customs applied in their society (Malo, 2016).…”