Politeness strategies used by the main characters in the Sherlock Holmes 2 movie

ABSTRACT

This study analyzes the types and the reasons for using politeness strategies used by the main characters in Holmes 2 movie. Brown and Levinson’s theory is used to help analyze the data, which include Bald on record, (2) positive politeness, (3) negative politeness, and (4) off record strategies.

This study is descriptive - qualitative research since the data are collected, analyzed and described in the form of words or utterances rather than numerical scores or statistics. It is a descriptive study because it tries to describe the way of politeness strategies employed by Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. This study has one primary data source which is the movie script of Sherlock Holmes 2 movie.

This research results show that Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson used three types of politeness strategies as proposed by Brown and Lavinson (1987), namely positive politeness, negative politeness and bald on record strategy. The possibly reason of using positive politeness because they use some strategies of positive politeness itself, such as be optimistic, avoid disagreement, offer or promise etc. Then, the characters used bald on record strategy, which means that they like to speak direct, ambigious, clear and concious way when they intend to achieve their wants. Negative politeness is used by the characters when they tried to wants to save the hearer’s negative face. Furthemore, it is recommended that the next researchers use these findings as the additional reference to analyze the conversation in the movie. They are also suggested to conduct similar studies which involve more complete data in searching other areas, such as debate, talk show, magazine and so on.