The Social Study on the Usage of Politeness Strategies

Introduction

Background of Study

Movie or film, in Merriam Webster, is defined as some set sequence of pictures or images set in motion to then be displayed on screen, or simply called as moving pictures. Alex Denney (2016), in his article, believes that some films, as mentioned, Arrival and Paterson, bring to the societies some beneficial messages about value of communication. Knowing that some messages may be conveyed through movie, then his point seems to be in line with a popular encyclopedia site known as Wikipedia, on which it is written that movie is as well a media of communication, besides its purpose as entertainment. There are educational researches taking film as an English learning and teaching media.

When watching some film, especially when taking the film into media of study, we should consider the content of it. One of those points to consider is language, as the tool of communication within some society in different situations and become a focus on how language is practically used in society (Mills, 2003). The theory of language in context, in which there are some relation between, with some elements like grammar, codes and structures, is described as pragmatics in the area of linguistics (Levinson, 1983).

We can find direct and indirect act of speech in films, in which the characters communicate each other. In Abedi (2016), it is stated by Mey (1993) that speech act could represent performance of the persons behind the utterance. Nababan (2018) then bring this case into He and Hu’s view (2013) saying that in using language, the users are then divided into two sides related to how they use the language, those with positive politeness and those with negative politeness, since the theory about politeness in pragmatics by Brown and Levinson (1987) was released. Later, it is described as awareness about consequence of language use towards someone’s feeling (Yule, 2016).

Politeness in films, as reported through the finding of research by Abedi, Bidabadi and Salehi (2016), is sometimes different from some context of real life, as there are a lot of possibilities like the characteristic of language users, conditional factors and social condition that make the value of politeness is important to understand to prevent communication conflict. Seeing politeness in films, Abedi, Bidabadi and Salehi (2016) also see that the casts can be measured and judged by the viewers as good and bad character through the way they use the language in communication.

The effect we give to someone’s public image is the definition of politeness. It gives ourselves quality of friendliness, solidarity and cooperation for respect and difference, and solidarity (Yule, 1996). Politeness is also seen as what is left after our language actions related to someone perception (Grundy, 1995). Leech (1983) and Mills (2003) point that politeness shows the relationship of participants among language users, and to be more polite in communication we should think about other’s feeling more than our own feeling in the effects which can happen from what we do with language.

Language societies, as the viewers of the film, can judge the characters in the films as good and bad personalities through the value of politeness they show in the way they communicate and use the language. Nevertheless in reality, sometimes the language societies themselves are not really aware that the way they communicate and use the language can lead people’s perception and judgment about their characteristics, whether they will be seen as the ones with positive or negative politeness in terms of pragmatics.

The study here will concern in animation movie by Disney Pixar titled Up which was released in 2009, where there are utterance conveyed in the film which the researcher will analyze based on the strategy of politeness used by the language user. Besides, the researcher will analyze the reasons of the taken politeness strategy in the film. Disney Pixar’s Up is one of the most successful Disney Pixar’s animation films which receives a lot of awards, and one of those is Best Family Film awards which was awarded to Up in the year in was released. That is why the researcher sees, as a family film awarded as the best one, Up should have value of morale and attitude, in this case, value of politeness in terms of pragmatics or the use of language, to convey to family all around the world, in which parents and children are. So through Up, the viewers will employ more the good values of politeness as discussed by the experts of pragmatics.

Scope and Limitation

This analysis on politeness strategy in the animation movie Up by Disney Pixar is conducted with pragmatic approach, or the relation between the language use and the user in meaning based on situation (Leech, 1983). This popular film shows many scenes where a boy has some communicate with an old man, and this is one of the reasons why researcher really wants to have some analysis on this problem.

Because of the limitation of time, between two types of politeness, positive and negative (Yule, 1996), this study is focused on positive politeness strategy employed by Russel, a boy whose main mission is hunting a pin for his achievement sign who has a lot of communication with the old man. The researcher will focus on the direct utterance that he employs in the movie as well as the reasons of strategy taken by him in terms of language use based on the contexts of communication in the movie.

Formulation of the Problem

1. What positive politeness strategies are employed by Russel through his direct speech acts in the animation Disney Pixar’s movie Up?
2. Seeing the contexts, why do those positive politeness strategies are employed by Russel through his direct speech acts in animation Disney Pixar’s movie Up?

Object of Study

1. To know the positive politeness strategies which are employed by Russel through his direct speech acts in the animation Disney Pixar’s movie Up.
2. Seeing the context, to know the reasons why those positive politeness strategies are employed by Russel through his direct speech acts in Disney Pixar’s movie Up.

Significance of Research

This research will bring significance to some parties. For the readers, especially the movie viewers, this study will let them know that politeness strategies can be found everywhere, in this case, via communication of the movie, with the contextual condition of segments or scenes in the movie. Besides, this makes us aware that when we, as the movie viewers, can judge the casts good or bad based on their politeness in using the language, the reality can be the same that we can be judged by people who watch us through how polite we are in using the language in contexts.

For parents and teachers, this can give some images of representation that study of language use, in this case, politeness strategies, can be taught through watching movies. In the movies, there are a lot of situations and conditions shown with and the ways how the casts employ the politeness strategies. This can give us awareness as well that choosing some movies to watch with the children and students and becoming a guide for our students and children in watching movies is quite important. For other researchers, hopefully this research will give some motivation or inspiration to conduct some analysis especially related to language study in movie, because there are a lot of things in movie to be analyzed related to language use. So, movie or film, besides its existence as entertainment, can be some object or media of study too that will make the study of language in practice able to develop with analysis on many kinds of media and objects. One of those is movie, the thing most everyone likes to discuss.

Theoretical Background

Pragmatics

It is argued by some linguists referring to Levinson (1987) that pragmatic study is the language of study in which the language is analyzed in functional point of view, which leads to some conclusion that some non-linguistic matters can take some roles in its study. And Crystal (1987) stated that in studying pragmatics, we analyze the factors that unite the forms of language in language use among language societies, as well as the consequence after the use of language towards other language users. While based on the basic theory of language, language use is simply formed from arranging language units to say, but practically there are more factors, especially in social area, that make the language use have more rules than what is in the basic theory.

Politeness

From Grice’s theory (1975) about the maxim of conversation, Brown and Levinson (1987) assume in line with the theory and see the cases of politeness as one of the main factors of destruction in maxim of conversation. Richard Watts (2004, 2005), as an expert who represents the theory of post-pragmatic approach the most, leads to the characterization of post-pragmatic approach which is known by its dynamic study on the value of politeness in language use. The value combines both the sides of social or norm, and pragmatic, as well as based on the perspective of the language users. Leech, in his “The Pragmatics of Politeness” in Oxford Studies in Linguistics, said that every language user may have different perception on measuring the value of politeness, seeing that a lot of factors known as contexts bring important role in it. The judgment good or bad in terms of politeness cannot be some fixed set in some principle and theory like the study of literal meaning like vocabulary knowledge.

Positive Politeness

Brown and Levinson (1987) stated that positive politeness represents some action of saving someone’s face. The action brought through the language use is employed with their willingness in the contexts of communication. Face here means the self-image of the person to whom we talk or to whom the utterance is conveyed. Their theory about positive politeness then continues to some more explanation that positive politeness, in simple social view, can be seen as respect, and the person who represents that can have the value of positive politeness. In social view, the person with positive politeness can be predicated as someone respectful, friendly and sensitive to others. Again, Brown and Levinson (1987) divide the positive politeness strategies into fifteen sub-strategies, they are: 1) Giving some special attention, 2) Exaggerating, can also be seen in interest and sympathy, 3) Showing a lot of interest, 3) As some identifier or marker among some group members, 5) Agreement seeking, 6) Disagreement seeking, 7) Making some presupposition, raising, or asserting some regular matter, 10) Offering or making promise, 11) Showing optimistic, 12) As some part of the communicator and communicant’s activity, 13) Giving or asking some reason, 14) Feedback assuming or asserting, and 15) Giving sympathy to communicant.

Speech Act

From Wikipedia, in terms of linguistics and language philosophical science, speech act performs both content and action. Content can be described as information. Speech act can be done by creating some utterance like illocutionary act such as words uttering, referring or predicating which are known as propositional act, and some certain purpose behind some utterance or illocutionary force. Besides, there is also known perlocutionary act to make some certain effect to the person we communicate with.

Direct Speech Act

Direct speech act occurs when there is some direct connection between the structure and the intention of communication in the utterance. Direct speech act can be described as the intended purpose which is conveyed by the speaker through producing some spoken language (Yule: 1996). In narrative, it is signed with some quotation marks or guillemet, written as the original utterance that the speaker really produces, without any additional process of changing the form of it like what paraphrasing does.

Animation Movie

From Wikipedia, animation started its history quite earlier before cinematography is well developed. At first, human seemed to create some imaging with some motion since Paleolithic period. It simply starts from the shadow play as the people play with their hand shadow making some images of animal on the wall with the help of firelight. Modern animation started in the eighteenth century, when the stroboscopic principles were introduced, which was also the gate of the cinematography. Since then, animation has been developed for purposed of show and entertainment industry.

Furthermore, Wikipedia describes animation as method of picture manipulation so it will appear as moving images. Traditionally, some animation is done by creating hand painting on transparent celluloid sheets to take into photograph and arranged than set as movie. Besides movie, this method is applied also for effect making or adding on some creation, motion graphic and design works like the menu in software we usually find on the screen of our laptop and mobile phone, and video games.

Disney Pixar’s Up

Up is animation film product from the collaboration of two great companies in the field of entertainment, Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation Studio. The film Up was first aired on 1 May 2009 at the Cannes Film Festival. From that promotion strategy, Up is noted as the first animation film which is played at the event. Twenty eight days after the event, Up was officially released in the United State. Then the movie entered Indonesia exactly two months after it was officially released in America. Up is directed by Pete Docter, assisted by Bob Peterson. Jonas Rivera, John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton are in the producer team for this film. The script is written by the director and assistant director, and in writing the story, they were supported by Thomas McCarthy. The 29 minutes length film spends $175 in its production. The budget spent for Up is quite worthy seeing that the costumer’s responses show compliments.

This movie accepts a lot of awards. From all the won awards, one award that makes the researcher have interest in making some study in it is the award of Best Family Film award. The events when a boy named Russel has to communicate with a temperamental old man is a challenge for this positive politeness related analysis. How they have some good relationship then and how the temperamental old man become a kind hearted man will tell the viewers that positive politeness can keep and create good relationship.

Research Methodology

Research Design

This study is conducted in qualitative research with descriptive approach. Qualitative research really emphasizes the meaning in the content. The result is then written in words rather than with numeric data (Anderson and Millicent, 2001). From the definition, we know that this method lets the researchers to describe the data from the object of research as what are found related to the objective of the study and interpret the data based on the researcher’s competence. With this method and approach, the researcher will analyze the positive politeness strategies and the reasoning behind them in the direct speech acts conveyed by Russel, a boy, one character of Disney Pixar’s Up.

Population, Sampling Technique and Sample

The population this study is the utterances of the characters of Disney Pixar’s movie Up. From this population, the researcher takes the utterances in forms of direct speech acts conveyed by one character, a boy named Russel. Purposive sampling is taken for this study. It is sampling method with non-probability, or is sample which is taken by the researcher in purpose of something related to his study, to represent the phenomena of some connected reality to some theory or principle. It is simply differed this type of sampling technique from the random sampling technique (Richie et al, 2004).

Instrument

The instruments the researcher uses for this study is some set of device with video player program, and the movie Up downloaded from the internet. We also download the English and Indonesian subtitle separately to be set together in the film while the film is being played. Besides, we search for the transcript of the movie to help us mark the part of positive politeness strategy and create draft of our analysis on it. In analyzing the data, we use some journals related to the theory of politeness and some theory books.

Data Collection

The steps done by the researcher in purpose of collecting the data for this study are as following: 1) Get the video of full length Disney Pixar’s movie Up from the internet, and download the English and Indonesian subtitle, as well as downloading the full movie transcript. 2) Watching the movie Up several times with set of device and video player program. 3) Transcribing Russel’s direct speech acts which contain positive politeness strategy in the movie. 4) Identifying the types of positive politeness strategy used by Russel in his direct speech acts. 5) Identifying Russel’s reasoning contextually in using positive politeness strategy in his direct speech acts in the movie, such as what condition and situation, or motivation that makes Russel use those positive politeness strategies.

Data Analysis

In analyzing the data, researcher refers to Brown and Levinson’s theory (1987) about the types of positive politeness’ strategy. Researchers also analyze the utterance based on the situation in the movie, the persons included in the communication, the problem or case related to the communication, and the basic background image of the characters. Knowing that politeness is not only about the language itself, but also related to the factors around like the base personality, background of language users, and even social condition (Richard Watts, 2004, 2005), the analysis is conducted based on the hearer’s point of view and whether or not, in social case, the cases of Russel’s language use seen as positive politeness from language and social points of view.