Indonesian EFL Journal (IEFLJ) p-ISSN 2252-7427, e-ISSN 2541-3635 Volume 8, Issue 2, July 2022 https://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/IEFLJ/index 147 LEARNING HOW TO BE POLITE THROUGH A MOVIE: A CASE ON BROWN AND LEVINSON’S POLITENESS STRATEGIES Roita Angel Isabella Department of English Education, Universitas HKBP Nommensen, Medan, Indonesia Email: roita.isabella@student.uhn.ac.id Eni Julita Br. Munthe Department of English Education, Universitas HKBP Nommensen, Medan, Indonesia Email: eni.munthe@student.uhn.ac.id Dian Jessica Noventy Sigalingging Department of English Education, Universitas HKBP Nommensen, Medan, Indonesia Email: dian.sigalingging@student.uhn.ac.id Ridwin Purba (Corresponding author) Department of English Education, Universitas Simalungun, Pematangsiantar, Indonesia Email: purbaridwin61@gmail.com Herman Department of English Education, Universitas HKBP Nommensen, Medan, Indonesia Email: herman@uhn.ac.id APA Citation: Isabella, R. A., Munthe, E. J. B., Sigalingging, D. J. N., Purba, R., & Herman. (2022). Learning how to be polite through a movie: A case on Brown and Levinson’s politeness strategies. Indonesian EFL Journal, 8(2), 147-154. https://doi.org/10.25134/ieflj.v8i2.6438 Received: 07-03-2022 Accepted: 12-05-2022 Published: 31-07-2022 INTRODUCTION Language is an important part of people’s life. Peoples use language in their daily life. Language is a tool used by people to communicate with others. According to Chaer and Agustina in Fitria, Ningrum, and Suhandoko (2020), language allows people to convey their feelings, emotions, thoughts, ideas, and so on. Without language, it is impossible to communicate with others. When someone speaks with others, they always want everything to go well. It is due to a desire to maintain a positive or close relationship with others. In case of communication, people should be able to decide a polite language which is appropriate to maintain communication. Polite language is used to make a comfortable interaction with others while Abstract: This research discusses politeness strategies at the Tinkerbell movie. The purpose of this study is to analyze the types of politeness strategies, to determine the most dominant types of politeness strategies and to determine the factors that influence the selection of politeness strategies contained in the Tinkerbell Film. This research uses theory by Brown and Levinson (1987). The research method is descriptive qualitative research with content analysis, because the data are collected from documents. There are several steps in collecting data, such as: searching, downloading, watching and listening, transcribing. The results showed 20 politeness strategies found in Tinkerbell Movie, such us: bald on-record 2 (10%), positive politeness 13 (65%), negative politeness 3 (15%), and off-record 2 (10%). The most dominant type of politeness strategy found in Tinkerbell movie is positive politeness. Factors that influence the selection of politeness strategies contained in the Tinkerbell movie are circumstances. Circumstances related to sociological variables included relative power of 6 (30%) and social distance of 14 (70%). Relative power (P) uses a greater degree of politeness with other people who have higher power or authority. Social distance (D) is seen as a composite of psychological factors such as status and age. In conclusion, with this research we must be careful when using language to communicate with other people so that the conversation goes well. Keywords: pragmatics; politeness strategies; movie. Roita Angel Isabella, Eni Julita Br. Munthe, Dian Jessica Noventy Sigalingging, Ridwin Purba, & Herman Learning how to be polite through a movie: A case on Brown and Levinson’s politeness strategies 148 using impolite language may be rugged for others. According to Pardede, Herman and Manurung (2021), polite or impolite utterances in public involve social interaction, distance, solidarity, and status. It means that many aspects can affect the speaker in using polite or impolite language. People often think that politeness is only by saying sorry, please, and thank you but actually politeness has its own rule. Yule in Fitria, Ningrum, and Suhandoko (2020, p.58) stated “politeness is respecting another person’s face and it is related to social distance and closeness”. In this case, politeness is needed to build a good relationship or social interaction with others. Pragmatics is the study of how a speaker communicates his or her senses and how a listener interprets them. According to Sianturi, Saragih, Sinaga, & Herman (2021), The analysis of language users' ability to pair sentences in situations where they are important is known as pragmatics (Herman, 2015). It means that it has consequently more to do with analyzing what people meant by them. Study pragmatics is very interested because it teaches the meaning of utterances by the context between speaker and listener. By accepting the background or situation, the hearer can easily catch the speaker’s intended meaning. It can be pragmatics is the association’s learning amid language and context to interpret what the speaker wants. With the different term, according to Griffith as cited in Aulia, Marliani, and Suryani (2019), pragmatics is about the relationship of our semantic knowledge with our knowledge of the world, taking into account context of use. In addition, Van Thao, Purba and Herman (2021) also described pragmatics as the study of the speaker meaning. This types and how the context influences what is said. It requires a consideration of how speakers organize what they want to say in accordance with who they are talking to, where, when and under what circumstances. Pragmatics is the study of contextual meaning. From the explanation of pragmatics given, pragmatics is a study about language, meaning, and the context in communication. According to Wang (2010), speakers have to be able to choose various communicative strategies to build a good relationship between both interlocutors. They also need to apply strategies to construct a good conversation. It means that these strategies have to be noticed to build a good conversation. These strategies are also called as politeness strategies. Considering others’ feeling is important because it will make others feel comfortable with our existence. Brown and Levinson as cited in Fitria, Ningrum, and Suhandoko (2020) emphasized politeness strategies are to save hearer’s face. Face refers to respecting someone and maintaining ‘self-esteem’ in public or private situations. It means that people must be aware of others’ face. When someone feels comfortable in the conversation, a good relationship is created. Politeness is reflected through the way of communication on verbal or we call speaking manner. According to Simaremare, Nainggolan and Herman (2021), politeness can be interpreted as an act of behaving right in social interaction and treating the interlocutor more well. Basically, politeness is not only about how to say please, sorry, excuse, and thank you in conversation but also it is more than just following the norm, custom or protocol. Furthermore, Cruse (2006) stated that politeness “enters into ways of addressing people”. The speaker can have a preference of pronouns for assigning the address according to the relationship between the speaker and the addresses. Then, Pardede, Herman and Pratiwi (2019) stated that politeness is an expression of the speaker to reduce the facial threat brought about by certain threatening faces against others. For this case, to relate the analysis about politeness, the researcher used a media. Media is an equipment that is used to send the topic material in learning process. Many media can be used in learning English, one of them is by using movie. According to Saragih, Sinaga, Herman, Purba, Saragi, and Manurung (2022), movie is a general term used for a particular motion picture or in general. The researcher chose a movie as a media to conduct the study because the movie provided the conversations which showed interpersonal relationships among speakers. Thus, this movie provided the example of how language was used in communication. Researcher is interested in analyzing politeness strategies, because of some problems, sometimes there are still misunderstandings in interpreting politeness. Understanding politeness is very important. People often think that politeness is simply a matter of saying please, sorry, excuse, and thank you. Politeness is a manner or etiquette in Indonesian EFL Journal (IEFLJ) p-ISSN 2252-7427, e-ISSN 2541-3635 Volume 8, Issue 2, July 2022 https://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/IEFLJ/index 149 communication that is aimed to respect each other in communication. In doing communication, people need to know how to make their conversation run well and smoothly. Consequently, people need to use politeness strategy to get a good response from the hearers. When we use the politeness strategy to communicate it means we respect each other and decrease misunderstanding. According to Brown and Levinson cited in Norra (2015), there are four main types of politeness strategies: bald on record, negative politeness, positive politeness and off- record. Example: Bobble : When preparing for spring Clank : We do all this and more! Clank/Bubble : Yes, being a tinker is never a bore! Tinkerbell : That was great. In this conversation Clank and Bubble show Tinkerbell the work of a tinker, and say: yes, being a tinker is never a bore! Then, Tinkerbell said: that was great, with what his friends have done. Showed that the speaker wanted to give the word stressing, such as the word "That was Great. Tinkerbell used positive politeness shown in bold and italicized words. In this conversation, the speaker used positive politeness strategy 2: Exaggerate. The researcher analyzes based on Brown and Levinson’s theory about politeness strategies. The researcher uses a movie as the source of data because a movie can be a good medium to learn politeness strategies of communication. People can watch movies intensively so they can conclude which one is good and which one is bad for them to apply in their daily life. Nowadays, people are so close to the digital device which they can watch movies everywhere and every time. Knowledge of politeness has a great importance and effects for daily communication of life so the researcher chooses politeness strategies as a topic in this research. Politeness relates to how people use a language in communication with others. This research has been conducted by several previous research. Hutahaean, Herman, Girsang (2021) from Universitas HKBP Nommensen, Medan. They analyzed about "An Analysis Of The Politeness Strategies Utilized By Pesbukers In Their Variety Show" the researcher conducted this research. This analysis took a realistic approach, concentrating on politeness techniques encountered in the Pesbukers Variety Show. This study aimed to look at various types of politeness strategies, decide which type was the most prevalent, and learn what factors influenced politeness strategies in Pesbukers’ variety show. Since the data gathered from the journal, the research approach was descriptive qualitative research with content analysis. The researcher chooses episode 10, broadcasted on 15 May 2019, with a duration of 1 hour 12 minutes. The data was collected in several stages: familiarisation and organisation, coding and reduction, interpretation, and representation. Positive politeness was the most common form of politeness strategy in Pesbukers' variety show. The difference between this research and previous research lies in the purpose of the research. previous studies discussed the politeness strategies used in variety show, while in this study the researchers analyzed the politeness strategies of the main character in Tinkerbell movie. In this research, Tinkerbell movie was used by the researcher in analyzing of the research because the researcher finds the types and factors which influenced of politeness strategies were used by the main characters in Tinkerbell movie and it was also very interesting movie. METHOD This research belongs to a descriptive qualitative method. It means that the research is interested in process, meaning and understanding gained through words or pictures, qualitative employs conversation, document analysis, interview and recording. Purba, Herman, Manullang, and Ngongo (2022) stated that qualitative approach is used to describe the data. One of the hallmarks of the qualitative technique is that it allows us to see the process we're dealing with in terms of the context, or the location where the study will be conducted. There were seven types of qualitative research. There were case studies, content or document analysis, ethnographic studies, grounded theory studies, historical studies, narrative research, phenomenological research (Ary et al. 2010). The researcher uses content or document analysis. According to Ary et al. (2010), a content or document analysis is a research method that is used to examine textual or visual information in order to find specific features. The materials analyzed can be text book, newspaper, web pages, speeches, television programs, advertisements, musical compositions, or any of a host of other types of Roita Angel Isabella, Eni Julita Br. Munthe, Dian Jessica Noventy Sigalingging, Ridwin Purba, & Herman Learning how to be polite through a movie: A case on Brown and Levinson’s politeness strategies 150 documents. Based on the purpose in this paper, this research is considered as qualitative research, because the researcher wants to analyze and describe the types of politeness strategies and factors influencing the choice of politeness strategies found in Tinkerbell Movie based on theory Brown and Levinson. The aim of the research was to get data. According to Arikunto (2010) said that the data are information or facts used in discussing or deciding the answer of research question. The source of data in the study was the subjects from which the data can be collected for the purpose of research. The data of this research take from dialogue of the main character which were containing politeness strategies in Tinkerbell Movie. Meanwhile, the source data was https://t.me/tinker bellmovies/3. Tinkerbell is a computer-animated film based on the Disney Fairies franchise, produced by Jeannine Roussel, directed by Bradley Raymond. And the duration of the film is 1 hour 18 minutes with English. The Film is produced using digital 3D modeling. The Album was released on DVD and Blu-Ray by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment on October 28, 2008. Researcher analyzes the film footage of Tinker Bell Movie because the film had an interesting story and can be watched by all ages. Besides, the researcher wants to analyze the types of politeness strategies, to know the most dominant types of politeness strategies found in Tinkerbell movie. The research instrument is the researcher herself. It does not need to make questionnaire because the subjects of this study are movies. The researcher analyzes the data by interpretation since the data are forms of politeness that using by main character in this movie. According to Lincoln and Guba (1981) in VanderStoep & Johnston (2008), humans are the best instrument for qualitative analysis. This style is well known as human instrument. More, human instrument means the one who analyses by interpreting the data objectively. As sources of data, the document has various forms, such as printed materials such as textbooks, newspapers, novels, script, or recorded material such as documentary film, movie, and any other types of recordings. The researcher used the movie script of Tinker Bell as the document. From the record, the researcher classifies the utterance of politeness strategy by using document analysis based on Brown & Levinson's theory (1987). According to Creswell (2014), a documentary is a technique to collect the data based on documents can be transcripts, books, newspapers, magazines, and many more. The researchers gathered data from the transcript for this study (Herman and Pardede, 2020). The data for analysis is collected from one movie: Tinkerbell Movie, the movie are produced 3 November 0082 . This study uses the following steps to collect the data: (1) Searching video from Telegram. (2) Downloading the video from https://t.me/tinkerbellmovies/3. (3) Watching and listening the movie. (4) Transcribing the utterances from the movie. Data analysis is a process of organizing and classifying the data into a pattern category and basic of analysis in order to find a theme and to formulate working hypothesis as the data suggest (Purba et. al., 2021). After the data have been collected from the data source, the researcher comes to data analysis. The approach that seems most purposeful in relation to the research questions of this study is politeness strategies. (1) Watching the movie Tinkerbell, take notes of the utterances containing Politeness Strategy. (2) Analyzing and examining the kinds of Politeness Strategy by using Politeness Strategy Theory from Brown and Levinson (1987). (3) Finding the data in the factors influencing politeness strategies in Tinkerbell Movie. (4) Describing and interpreting data to answer the research problems. (5) Drawing conclusions. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Results After analyzed the politeness strategies found in main Character in Tinker Bell Movie, the researcher found that: (1) There were four politeness strategies found in Tinker Bell Movie. They were: bald on- record (2), positive politeness (13), negative politeness (3), and off-record (2) Based on the data analyzed showed that the most used politeness strategies found in Tinker Bell Movie was a positive politeness. Positive politeness used by main character in Tinkerbell Movie to create a pleasant situation, build good relationships and good interactions. Based on the data, the researcher showed the percentage of politeness strategies in the table. The percentage of the contrast will be counted as: Indonesian EFL Journal (IEFLJ) p-ISSN 2252-7427, e-ISSN 2541-3635 Volume 8, Issue 2, July 2022 https://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/IEFLJ/index 151 Table 1. Data findings of politeness strategies No. Types of Politeness Frequ ency Percentag e 1. Bald on-record 2 10% 2. Positive Politeness 13 65% 3. Negative Politeness 3 15% 4. Off-record 2 10% Total 20 100% Figure 1. Percentages of politeness strategies found in Tinkerbell movie The factor influenced choice of politeness strategies found in Tinkerbell was circumstances. Circumstances deal with sociological variables included the relative power 6 (30%) and social distance 14 (70%). Relative power (P) used greater degrees of politeness with others who have higher power or authority. Social distance (D) can be saw as the composite of psychological factors such as status and age. Based on the data, the researcher showed the percentage of factors influenced the choice of politeness strategies in the table. Table 2. Factors influenced the choice of politeness strategies N o. Factors Influenced the Choice of Politeness Strategies Frequ ency Perce ntage 1. Relative Power 6 30% 2. Social Distance 14 70% Total 20 100% Figure 2. Percentage of factors influenced the choice of politeness strategies found in Tinkerbell movie Discussion After analyzed the data, the researcher discussed the whole data and answer the problem of the research/research questions. There were three aims of this research, such as: to analyzed the types of politeness, to know the most dominant type of politeness strategies, and to know the factors influenced choice of politeness strategies found in Tinkerbell Movie. The researcher used Brown and Levinson (1987) theory to analyzed the types of politeness strategies found in Tinkerbell Movie and to know the factors influenced choice of politeness strategies found in Tinkerbell Movie. From the research findings above, the researcher found there were 20 politeness strategies in Tinkerbell Movie, such as: bald on-record 2 (10%), positive politeness 13 (65%), negative politeness 3 (15%), and off- record 2 (10%). The most dominant type of politeness strategies found in Tinkerbell Movie was positive politeness. Positive politeness used by main character in Tinkerbell Movie to create a pleasant situation, build good relationships and good interactions. The factor influenced choice politeness strategies found in Tinkerbell Movie was circumstances. Circumstances deal with sociological variables including the relative power 6 (30%) and social distance 14 (70%). Relative power (P) used greater degrees of politeness with others who have higher power or authority. Social distance (D) saw as the composite of psychological factors such as status and age. Based on findings of the research, the researcher found that there were the similarities with the findings from related previous research by Hutahaean, Herman, Girsang (2021) entitled "An Analysis Of The Politeness Strategies Utilized By Pesbukers In Their Variety Show". They used Roita Angel Isabella, Eni Julita Br. Munthe, Dian Jessica Noventy Sigalingging, Ridwin Purba, & Herman Learning how to be polite through a movie: A case on Brown and Levinson’s politeness strategies 152 descriptive qualitative to analyze the data, and analyzed the politeness strategies found in the data based on Brown and Levinson (1987) theory they are: bald on-record, positive politeness, negative politeness, and off-record. From the findings of his research, showed the most dominant type of politeness strategies found in Pesbukers variety show was positive politeness. Most of the speaker and hearer in Pesbukers used a positive politeness to made enjoyable situation, build good relation, good interaction between speaker and hearer so the conversation become run well. The difference between this research and previous research lies in the purpose of the research. previous studies discussed the politeness strategies used in variety show, while in this study the researchers analyzed the politeness strategies of the main character in Tinkerbell movie CONCLUSION Based on the data analysis in chapter IV, the conclusions were drawn as follows: (1) Objective of this research of this research is to analyze the types of politeness strategies found at the Tinkerbell movie. Researcher used Brown and Levinson (1987) theory in classified types of politeness strategies into 4 types They are: bald on-record, positive politeness, negative politeness, off-record. From those types, researcher found the types of politeness strategies as follows; there are bald on- record 2 data (10%), positive politeness 13 data (65%), negative politeness 3 data (15%), off-record 2 data (10%). (2) The most dominant type of politeness strategies found in Tinkerbell Movie was positive politeness. The main character in Tinkerbell Movie used a positive politeness to create a pleasant situation, build good relationships and good interactions. (3) In this analysis the factor influenced choice politeness strategies found in Tinkerbell Movie was circumstances. Circumstances deal with sociological variables includes the relative power 6 data (30%) and social distance 14 data (70%). Relative power used greater degrees of politeness with others who have higher power or authority. 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