THE USE OF IMPOLITENESS STRATEGIES ON SHELDON COOPER’S UTTERANCES IN SELECTED EPISODES OF THE BIG BANG THEORY TV SHOW

Abstract

Compared to Politeness, Impoliteness is a study in linguistics that linguists and scholars pay less attention to. However, there are some experts and theorists who start to think about discussing impoliteness in language. Culpeper (1995, 2002) is one of the experts who have given much focus to it. One of his famous work is compiled in a term called Impoliteness Strategies. Taking Brown and Levinson‘s (1995, 2002) Politeness Strategies as the departing point, Culpeper proposes five strategies and sub strategies which a speaker could use in attacking the hearer‘s face. Face itself is an idea that was previously coined by Goffman (1967). It refers to someone‘s image and someone‘s freedom to act; both of which is substituted with positive and negative face term respectively. In this thesis, the Impoliteness Strategies are used to analyze the interaction between Sheldon Cooper with other main Characters in The Big bang Theory TV Show; an American situational comedy. The nature of the study is descriptive. Thus, the aim is to describe what impoliteness strategies Sheldon Cooper uses and how they are performed throughout the show. The responses of the other characters are also subject to research. This thesis uses the library research in analyzing the qualitative data. The data are transcribed from the actual conversation between Sheldon Cooper and the other main characters from the selected episodes of the show. The collected data are then split into 16 extracts containing certain scenes in which different contexts and different participants are involved. The results of the discussion present many different impoliteness strategies used by Sheldon Cooper in his utterances. Bald-On record impoliteness, positive impoliteness, negative impoliteness, and mock impoliteness are all evident. Withhold impoliteness does not appear to be used by the character. The other characters, who have become the victims of the Impoliteness Strategies, perform all three possible ways to respond to Sheldon Cooper‘s impolite remarks; offensive and defensive responses, accepting the speaker‘s attack, and ignoring the speaker.