Politeness Strategy used by Julia Gillard in her Labor Party Official Campaign Speech in August 16th 2010

ABSTRACT

As social human we must make good relationship with others for surviving life. Therefore we must be able to communicate smoothly. One of the most important ways to achieve this objective is politeness strategy. There are many language phenomena which reflect to the usage of politeness strategy, because politeness is a basic of production of social order. One of politeness phenomena appear in speech since speaker tends to use politeness strategies in convincing the hearer and making smooth communication. Therefore, the researcher chooses politeness strategies to investigate language phenomena appear in Julia Gillard’s speech in her Labor Party Official Campaign in Brisbane.

The key instrument of this study is the researcher herself because this is the descriptive qualitative research. The objectives of this study are to find out the kinds of politeness strategies used by Julia Gillard and the implementation of using those kinds of politeness strategies in her Labor Party Official Campaign speech.

This study uses descriptive- qualitative approach since it describes the data using narrative description without using numerical analysis. The data are taken from the transcript of Julia Gillard’s speech in her Labor Party Official Campaign speech in Brisbane in August 16th 2010 which is taken from credible source of data that is http://www.news.com.au/features/federal-election/transcript-julia-gillards-campaign-launch/story.

The findings of this study show that Julia Gillard applies almost all of the politeness strategies in her speech as being proposed by Brown and Levinson, they are: bald on record, positive politeness, negative politeness, and off record but not all of the cases are covered in her speech. The implementation of using bald on record is used to achieve the maximum efficiency of utterance. Positive politeness is used to satisfy the hearer’s positive face by including them as friend or the member of the group. Negative politeness is used in the situation in which S has the main focus on assuming that he maybe imposing and intruding on H’s face. Off Record is used when S wants to do an FTA, but wants to avoid the responsibility for doing it. Generally, Julia tends to use positive politeness more frequently because she wants to enhance and satisfy hearer by delivering her speech.

Since this study analyzes the kinds and implementation of politeness strategies in Julia Gillard’s speech only in her Labor Party’s official campaign in Brisbane in August 16th 2010, the researcher suggests that people who will give a formal speech, they have to consider with the appropriate language to be used in the context speech to avoid conflict and misunderstanding of the H. And it will be more interesting to analyze another Julia Gillard’s speeches by using the same theory of politeness strategy.