Impoliteness Strategies in Revealing the Intellectual Conflict in Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash

Abstract

This thesis is about the impoliteness strategies in revealing the intellectual conflict in Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash. The aims of this research are to find the types of impoliteness strategies, to reveal the intellectual conflict and to find the outcomes of the intellectual conflict. This research is analysed using the types of impoliteness strategies by Culpeper (1996) and intellectual conflict by Johnson and Johnson (2009). Furthermore, the context of situation is used to determine the exact utterances containing conflict and the types of impoliteness strategies. This research applies qualitative method. The purposive sampling is used in collecting the data from the internet. The data is in the form of utterances containing conflict and types of impoliteness in Whiplash. From 913 utterances available and with purposive sampling method, there are 100 utterances containing conflict and types of impoliteness strategies. These utterances are divided into 7 dialogue scenes. The result of this research shows that the conflicts arise entirely in the formal situations, for instance, in the middle of the class and during the competition. In the dialogue scenes, Fletcher dominantly employs positive impoliteness strategies to push his students under his pressure to learn faster and to go beyond what they have expected just like in an army military training. By employing negative impoliteness, Fletcher emphasizes his relative power to his students and he employs it to force and intimidate his students to accept his face-attacking. The impoliteness strategies can trigger the intellectual conflict by emphasizing the intense situation, showing relative power and forcing the hearers to learn harder. Moreover, the results of the outcomes are both constructive and destructive. The constructive outcomes involve Neiman and Connolly and the destructive outcomes involve Neiman and Tanner.