An analysis on Politeness principles used in “Spartacus” movie

ABSTRACT

People who are trying to maintain social relation in the society need certain communication strategies. One of the most important ways to achieve this objective is politeness strategy. Politeness is best expression as the practical application of good manners or etiquette. It is a culturally defined phenomenon, and what is considered polite in one culture can often be quite rude or simply strange in another. However, politeness phenomena can be appeared in the fiction since fiction can be considered as the representation of the natural events. Therefore, the researcher chooses politeness strategies to investigate language phenomena occurs in “Spartacus” movie.

This research focuses on the concepts of pragmatics and politeness. This study is designed to find out the kinds of politeness strategies used by Spartacus and David and to find out the functions of using those kinds of politeness strategies in their conversation.

The research design of this study is descriptive-qualitative since the data are collected and analyzed. The data are taken from the movie script of Spartacus. After obtaining the data, the researcher classifies them into different strategies of politeness. The next are analyzing them and making general conclusion based on the theory of politeness strategies.

The results of this study show that the main characters (Spartacus and David) use four kinds of politeness strategies to invite othyer slaves to fight againts the Oppression of Rome as being proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987), they are: Bald on Record, Positive Politeness, Negative Politeness, and Off Record. The function of using Blad on Record is to achieve the maximum efficiency of their utterance. Positive Politeness is used by the main characters to satisfy the hearer’s positive face by approving or including them as friend or the member of the group. Negative Politeness is used in the situation in which the main characters have the main focus on assuming that they may be imposing and intruding on hearer’s face. Off Record is used in the condition in which the main characters have to take some pressures off of the hearer.

Since this study only discusses about the main characters in using politeness strategies, so the researcher suggests to the next researchers to conduct further researches and use various characters, not only the main characters of the movie.