Politeness strategies used in the born loser comic strips of the Jakarta Post

ABSTRACT

In case of communication, it is hardly possible to have misunderstanding with our partners in communication. It is caused by some social gaps between the speaker and the hearer. The speaker is required to reduce such gaps. In other words, the speaker needs to achieve the social goals before achieving the final one. Furthermore, the speaker is also a strategist when he speaks. The speaker needs the linguistic devices and the conversational strategies, which will lead to achieving the social goals. These linguistic devices and conversational strategies are called politeness strategies. People use them to create a comfortable and polite conversation, and to make the conversations run well and smoothly.

This research analyzes the politeness strategy used in the Born Loser comic strips of the Jakarta Post based on Brown and Levinson’s theory. The research problems in this thesis are: (1) What are the types of politeness strategies used in Born User comic strips of The Jakarta Post?, (2) How are the politeness strategies used in the Born User comic strips of The Jakarta Post?. The data are taken from the utterances or dialogues in the Born User comic strip of The Jakarta Post published from the 20th June to 20th July, 2005, These data are analyzed by using descriptive qualitative method; because the data are explained descriptively.

Based on the findings of the research, it is found that the characters of the Born Loser comic strips apply four of the politeness strategy, they are bald on-record strategy, positive politeness strategy, negative politeness strategy, and off record strategy, although not all of the strategies are covered. Bald on record strategy is used in an urgent situation, in the form of an emergency expression, commanding and giving instruction, teasing, warning, and expressing violent emotion. Moreover, the positive politeness strategy is mostly used by the characters in this comic strip to express their close-friend lines and solidarity. This strategy appears in their interaction in the form of seeking agreement by repeating part of the preceding utterance and raising the topic that satisfy hearer’s desire to be right; using the address terms; joke; avoid disagreement by pseudo agreement, token agreement, and opinion hedge; offer; noticing the hearer’s condition, and exaggerating with the hearer. Besides, negative politeness strategy, the main characters often display it in the form of be in conventionally indirect; being pessimistic; disassociate the speaker and the hearer from the particular imposition. Whereas, in some occasions, they also use off record strategy. In which they use giving hints, rhetorical question, be ambiguous, metaphor, overstatement, understatement, and be vague.

There are also some acts that mostly threaten the hearer’s positive face in this comic strip. Those acts involve showing and stating contradiction, bringing bad news about the hearer, blatant non-cooperation, and expression of violent emotion, complaint, bringing bad news about the hearer, blatant non-cooperation, and expression of violent emotion. Other acts that also threaten the hearer’s negative face in these comic strips are giving warning, giving suggestion, giving compliment, and showing anger. In this comic strips also found some acts that threaten the speaker’s face, both in the case of offending the speaker’s own negative face (such as excuses, accept offer, responses to the hearer’s faux pas) and damaging the speaker’s own positive face (e٠g. accepting compliment, self-humiliating and making a confession).

Finally, it is suggested that the next researchers use the other part of conversation analysis, such as : take tum, speech act, deixis, and explicature in analyzing the comic strips; the other subject of study for future investigation can also be used, such as : the dialogues found in formal or informal interview and conference. It is also expected that the next researcher use other politeness strategy theories to do an investigation on the same field of research. It is suggested to the comic strip’s readers to be more sensitive in imderstanding the utterance in comic strips, whether it is polite or not. It is also suggested to the comic strip’s author, although comic strips are as an entertainment, but the author may not neglect the politeness unsure in his or her comic strips, both on its utterances and pictures. He or she should still apply these politeness strategies in making the comic strips to send the message that he or she wants to give to the readers of comic strips.