Politeness Realization and Social Identity in Friends TV Sitcom

摘要

This study explores politeness strategies in regards to different settings and purposes to recognize different identities. Many scholars discuss the relationship between discourse analysis and pragmatics. Discourse analysis focuses on the form of language use above the level of sentence in its cohesion, coherence, and macrostructure; while pragmatics sees illocutionary (functional purpose) and perlocutionary (response to) elements of the language used. Thus, pragmatics analysis is part of discourse analysis. Some linguists, however, have learned that both focus on the interface between the content and the purpose of the language being used and how the linguistic and social contexts influence the meaning. Politeness utterances as varieties of language are interpreted by using Gee's tool of inquiry called social languages. It is linguistic varieties or politeness one employs depending on social identity that one chooses based on the setting. This study observed a speaker in two or more different settings and compared the politeness employed based on the settings of the speaker. The utterances are taken from utterances spoken by the speaker in Friends TV Sitcom. The result shows that the speaker employs politeness in informal setting with young child in different form of politeness compared with politeness in more formal setting with mutual adult hearer.