Politeness Strategies Employed by the Main Characters in “A Star is Born” Movie

Sahfilza Khoiril Basyar

doi:10.26740/lh.v10n3.p26-33

Sahfilza Khoiril Basyar State University of Surabaya

DOI: https://doi.org/10.26740/lh.v10n3.p26-33

Keywords: Movie, politeness, off record, negative, on record, positive

Abstract

Politeness strategy is a tool in keeping a communication run efficiently and smoothly. This research focused on the use of Politeness Strategies used by two main characters of ‘A Star is Born’ movie, Ally and Jackson. Jackson is a famous country rock singer who suffering an alcohol and drug addiction and Ally who works as a waitress in a reastaurant and sideline as a singer and songwriter. A Star is Born is a musical romance movie. The theory that used by researcher to completed this research is the theory of politeness strategy by Brown and Levinson (1987). The purposes of this research were to identify the type of politeness strategy used by the two main characters of the movie and the factors that influincing the choice of politeness strategy. This research used a qualitative research method by employing discourse analysis to answer the purpose of the study. The data were 40 utterances gathered through documentation technique. According to the result of the study, it can be seen that there were 4 types of politeness strategies employed by the two main characters, i.e. off record, negative politeness, on record, and positive politeness. Furthermore, the factors influencing the two main characters to use such types of politeness strategies is sociological variables which consist of social distance, relative power, and rank of imposition.

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