Politeness Strategies in Directive Speech Acts in a Short Movie “Mind Your Language”

Abstract

The objective of the research is to recognize kind of politeness strategies, in directive speech acts in the short movie "Mind Your Language". The method used in this research is a descriptive method using a qualitative approach that focuses on pragmatics. The data source is a script of "Mind Your Language" short movie created by London Weekend Television in 1977 and directed by Stuart Allen. The sample of data is transcripts directive speech acts from five speakers. It expresses speech acts that represent the criteria of politeness strategies include bald on record, positive politeness, and negative politeness. The analysis is completed by collecting the directive speech acts as the data and giving code: 1 (bald on record), 2 (positive politeness), 3 (negative politeness). This code-giving technique is used to make it easier in identifying the politeness strategies used by the speakers. The writer uses the theory of Brown and Levinson (1987) to investigate the data. There are 30 (thirty) utterances occurred. The writer found 14 utterances that are categorized as directive speech acts. It means that those fourteen utterances are used as the sample to be analyzed based on politeness strategies. The most common politeness strategies in the directive speech act in this movie are a positive politeness strategy which indicates the speaker is seeking a close relationship and giving appraisal to the listener. Hence, studying about politeness and its strategies is important to make meaningful communication and to respect the addressee. The writer hopes that many people will be interested to study politeness deeper to create a better attitude, particularly about how to respect and save the face of a speaker and addressee.