Request strategies used in American Films

ABSTRACT

In using a language as means of communication, people may yield an action. The communicative acts like requesting, apologizing, complimenting et cetera, have different ways and different means in each culture. Requests are of particular interests in regard to the reflection and expression of cultural values, since requests could be performed in direct or indirect way. Whereas, social and cultural norms of the society can be studied through literary works or pop cultural document like film. Therefore, this research concerns with the strategies used in performing request and the contextual factors which may influence the choice of strategy that are fotind in American films.

This research is designed by using descriptive qualitative method. The data are collected from the requesting utterances of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, In Good Company, and Legally Blonde. They are analyzed inductively through the observation done by the researcher herself. The model for coding strategy patterns of request is based on Blum-Kulka, et.al. (1989) which has been widely used in investigating request strategies.

As the result, the researcher finds that there are thirty-two times of requests performed in imperative form, three hedged-performatives, eight obligation-statements, two want-statements which are categorized as direct strategies. Then, there are six requests performed in query preparatory which is categorized as conventionally indirect strategy, while non-conventionally indirect strategy is used six times by using strong hint in the form of statement and question, and once in mild hint. However, explicit performatives and suggestory formula are not found in these three films. Whereas, the choice of strategies is influenced by the levels of social relationship and the situational contexts.

Since the findings of this research have not found out two strategy types and the effectiveness of the used strategies of each request is not known, finally the researcher suggests to the next researchers to use more various settings in order to get all strategy types in performing requests. As well, they can analyze the speech act of requests in term of its locution, illocution, and perlocution, so the effectiveness of strategy used can be revealed.