An analysis of positive politeness Strategy in the film entitled “in good company” (a pragmatics study)

Communication has an important role in our life. According to Gartside communication is the art of sharing anything. In its vital sense it means a sharing of ideas and feelings in a mood mutual understanding (1986:1). Thus, people can cooperate with each other when they communicate just as they do in any other shared activity. Communication is usually defined as conversation, namely for sending and receiving message. If the message cannot be received it means that communication does not work well. In order to make communication run in harmony, the hearer should know the speaker’s aim. Moreover, everyday we adapt our conversation to different situations. Among our friends for instance, we can easily say something that would be seen discourteous among strangers and we avoid over formally with our friends. In both situations above we try to avoid making the hearer embarrassed and uncomfortable. People generally behave in accordance with their expectation concerning their public self-image or face wants to be respected. Face means public self- image of a person; it refers to the emotional and social sense of self that everyone has and expects everyone to recognize (Yule, 1996:60). Face has two aspects, positive and negative. An individual’s positive face is reflected in his or her desires to be liked, approved of, respected of and appreciated by others. While an individual’s negative face is reflected in the desire not be impeded or put upon, to have the freedom to act as one chooses (Thomas, 1995:169). Therefore, people in their relationship need to preserve both kinds of faces for themselves and the people they interact with the politeness utterances. According to Brown and Levinson (1987:65), certain kinds of acts intrinsically threaten face, namely those acts that by their nature run contrary to the face wants of the hearer and / or of the speaker. For example, the hearer’s positive face will damage when the speaker insulting the hearer, and also the vi hearer’s negative face will damage when the speaker order the hearer. It also could damage the speaker’s own positive and negative face for example, when the speaker admits that he has failed in his job and when the speaker offers help to the hearer. FTAs are acts that infringe on the hearer’s need to maintain his or her self- esteem and be respected, http://en.wikipedia. org. /wiki/pragmatics. In order to avoid or minimize to reduce the possibility of damage to the hearer’s face or to the speaker’s own face, he or she may adopt certain strategies. Brown and Levinson sum up human politeness behavior in four strategies among them are the bald on record strategy, the positive politeness strategy, the negative politeness strategy, and bald off record strategy. For example: a. Put your jacket away. b. You must be hungry, it’s a long time since breakfast. How about some lunch? c. I just want to ask you if I could use your computer? d. It’s bit cold in here. The example (a) is the example of bald on-record strategy, it shows that the speaker does nothing to minimize threats to the hearer’s face. The example (b) is the positive politeness strategy. It shows that the speaker recognizes the hearer’s desire to be respected. It also confirms that the relationship is friendly and expresses group reprocity. The example (c) is negative politeness. It shows that the speaker actually recognizes the hearer’s face but it also shows that the speaker in someway imposes the hearer to borrow the computer. The last example (d) is bald off record strategy, the speaker is trying to avoid FTAs by asking the hearer to close the window. Instead the speaker expects the hearer to close the window. Considering the phenomena above, the speaker should be able to produce the appropriate politeness strategy for being considered as a polite person. Furthermore, the researcher is interested to analyze the politeness strategies based on Brown and Levinson’s politeness strategy in a film. The film entitled “In Good vii Company” has a good solid story of a middle-aged man dealing with both supporting his family and keeping his job (bordering on a mid-life crisis), and a young man dealing with a new job, being alone, and finding what he actually wants to do with the rest of his life. The story puts the situation most in a workplace, where the different statuses such as friend, client, boss or the superior interact as the result there are many politeness strategy employed in this movie. Since there are many employment of positive politeness strategy found in the dialogue in the film entitled “In Good Company”. The researcher tries to analyse them. To clarify the research background, the following example will give clear understanding about it. Alex Foreman : Dad, I’m not gonna be a professional tennis player. Dan Foreman : Well, look, sweetheart, being a writer is just as tough. (Taken from “In Good Company”) The example above shows that Dan as the speaker employs positive politeness strategy 4, namely uses in-group identity markers. Actually, Dan disagrees with Alex because he wants Alex to be a professional tennis player not a writer. Dan uses the word ‘sweetheart’ to address Alex in order to minimize the FTAs (advise). It is not only to consider the relative power or status difference between father and daughter to be small but also to soft the imperative by indicating that it is not a power back command. Thus, Alex positive face is saved because she has been appreciated by her father. In order to understand more about positive politeness strategy and what factors influence the characters to employ the politeness strategy, the researcher viii intends to conduct a research entitled An Analysis of Positive Politeness Strategy in the Film Entitled “In Good Company”