A study on politeness strategies used by Madurese in Sumenep Regency: Case study at Bragung Village of Sumenep Regency

ABSTRACT

Essentially the study of language in a society relates to the utterances of people use it in their daily activities or interactions. Language itself has many functions, one of them is as a meant of communication. Language is not only a simply meant of communicating and transferring the information but it also has a great important role in establishing and maintaining the relationship with the other people.

Indeed, people will seek to use the strategies to have a polite conversation. Politeness strategies are used in order to reduce the friction and to get their conversation runs well and go smoothly. Therefore, they seek to say anything in good linguistic detail of their utterances. Being polite involves taking account of the feeling of others. They will make other people feel comfortable. Jhis research is conducted in order to find out the kinds of politeness strategies used by Madurese at Sumenep regency and how the politeness strategies occur in their daily activities.

This research used descriptive qualitative research design. The data were the utterances, which were collected by using observation and interview. The subject of the research was politeness strategies used by Madurese at Sumenep regency. The data sources of the research were the Bragung people of Sumenep regency. The data collected, then, were analyzed in accordance with the problems of the study.

As the results, the researcher found out both positive and negative politeness strategies used by Madurese at Sumenep regency. The positive politeness strategies, which could be found, were exaggeration, intensify interest to H, seek agreement, avoid disagreement, joke, offer and promise, include both S and H in the activity and give or ask for reasons. Positive politeness strategies, which were not found, were notice, be optimistic, in¬group identity marker, raise common ground, assert S's knowledge, assume or assert reciprocity and give gifts to H. In contrast, the negative politeness strategies which were used by Madurese were be conventionally indirect, be pessimistic, give deference, apologize and impersonalise S and H. Furthermore, the negative politeness strategies, which were not found, were go-on record as incurring a debt, question and hedge, minimize the imposition (Rx), state the FTA as a general rule and nominalize.

The researcher hopes that this thesis could give contribution toward the researcher himself especially, to the readers and to the further researchers in the case of politeness strategies. It is hoped for further researchers to conduct the research not only focus on conversational function but also on the 1written function of language