Politeness Strategies Performed by the Main Character in Isn't It Romantic Movie

Abstract

This research dealt with the use of politeness strategy by Natalie as the main character in Isn’t It Romantic movie towards other characters in the movie; Natalie’s mother, Josh, Whitney, Blake, Natalie’s co-worker, Donny, and Boss. This research is aimed to find the types of politeness strategy used by Natalie to talk with her interlocutors who have different relationship with Natalie using the theory of politeness strategies by Brown & Levinson (1987) to analyze the data, as well as to find the factors that influence Natalie to choose the certain politeness strategy using relevant circumstances theory by Brown & Levinson (1987). Moreover, this research is also aimed to find the effect of the politeness strategy used by Natalie towards her interlocutors using face theory by Brown & Levinson (1987). This research is a qualitative research as the data of this research are Natalie’s utterances consisting politeness strategies from scene 1 and 2. The source of data was the subtitle of a movie entitled Isn’t It Romantic which was downloaded from https://subscene.com/subtitles/isnt-it-romantic/english/1982249. The result found that there were 16 utterances consisting politeness strategies. The data were then categorized into the types of politeness strategies from Brown & Levinson (1987) to find out the types that are used by Natalie. Then, the data were analyzed according to the social factors such as power (P), social distance (D), and rank of imposition (R) to find out how the social factors affect Natalie in choosing the politeness strategy. Lastly, the data were analyzed using the face theory to find the effect of applied politeness strategy towards the hearer face, whether it threatened the hearer’s face or saving the hearer’s face. The result showed that from 16 utterances, Natalie applied all four politeness strategies, with 1 usage of bald on record strategy, 10 usages of positive politeness strategy, 3 usages of negative politeness strategy, and 2 usages of off record strategy. The used politeness strategy by Natalie was influenced by the social factors depending on the circumstances of the ongoing conversation. Natalie’s choice of politeness strategy affected the hearer’s face, whether threatening or saving the hearer’s face, depending on the circumstances of the ongoing conversation.