POLITENESS STRATEGIES USED BY OBAMA IN A GREAT OPEN DEBATE “THE FIRST PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE” ON SEPTEMBER 26TH, 2008

Abstract

Pragmatics is a systematic way of explaining language used in context. The study deals with pragmatics especially politeness strategy. Politeness is one of communication strategy that shows how to be polite in words and actions. This study analyzes politeness strategy used by Barack Obama in his debate on September 26th, 2008. It is interesting to analyze the first presidential 2008 debate because this debate was as a great open debate between Barack Obama and McCain. The primary data are taken from website (http://www.election.NYtimes.com) accessed on June 28th, 2012. The study applies both qualitative and quantitative method to analyze the data. Qualitative research is applied to analyze the data in the form of the text and quantitative research is used to count the amount of politeness strategies used by Obama to conclude which process is primarily dominant strategy. This study uses theory of Brown and Levinson (1987) that proposed four kinds of politeness strategies; bald on record, positive politeness, negative politeness, and off record. The finding of the study elucidates that Barack Obama in his debate uses positive politeness dominantly. It reaches 80 %. It indicates that Obama uses positive politeness because he wants to be closer to the hearers. Moreover, Obama wants to persuade the hearers or audience in his debate by using positive politeness dominantly to hearers.