Politeness and power relation in EFL classroom interactions / Sheila Agustina

ABSTRACTAgustina, Sheila. 2016. Politeness and Power Relation in EFL Classroom Interactions. Thesis. English Language Teaching, Graduate Program, State University of Malang. Advisors: (I) Prof. Drs. BambangYudiCahyono,M.Pd., M.A., Ph.D., (II) Dr. Johannes A. Prayogo, M.Pd., M.Ed.Keywords: politeness, power, face-saving, face-threatening, utterancesThe role of a teacher is not only teaching content materials but also educating, guiding, and enlightening the students. With this consideration, the relationship between a teacher and students also determines the success of the students in the classroom. Seeing how teacher’s interpersonal communication skills contribute to the success of a language teacher, the researcher in this study investigates the utterances generated by the lecturers and learn how power can be exercised through the choice of the language. Specifically,this study aims at (1) identifying how lecturers’ utterances indicate face-threatening acts, (2) identifying how lecturers’ utterances indicate face-saving acts, (3) determining the exercises of power in the lecturers’ utterances, and (4) investigating the students’ perception toward their lecturers’ utterances.This study uses qualitative approach to answer the afore-mentioned problems of study. The data of this study are in the form of utterances generated by six lecturers of English Department in Faculty of Letters of State University of Malang. In collecting the lecturers’ utterances, the researcher uses field notes and video recording. For investigating the students’ perception, the researcher distributes 25-Likert Scale questionnaire to ninety-seven students.The findings show that the lecturers were showing face-threatening acts by delivering instructions in direct speech acts. In contrast, the lecturers were showing face-saving acts by delivering instructions in the form of indirect speech acts by inserting some particular expressions, modality, appreciative expressions, the students’ name, and polite markers. The findings also show that legitimate power, referent power, expert power, and reward power are respectively exercised in the lecturers’ utterances. According to the result of the questionnaire, majority of students believe that the utterances generated by their lecturers influence their class atmosphere, academic achievement, and students’ self-esteem and self-confidence. The students also expect polite words from their lecturers. By expressing indirect utterances and polite expressions, students feel more comfortable and appreciated. In addition, students believe that by generating polite utterances, lecturers can still manage their power inside the classroom and make a positive lecturer-student relationship.Due to the results of the study, some suggestions have been formulated for future researchers: (1) include a larger and more various data so that generalization can be made more valid and reliable, (2) consider the non-verbal expressionssuch as tone, mimics, and gestures to see how those expressions are related to politeness, and (3) design the research in more various fields such as advertisement, mass media, or politics.