This chapter explains about:
background of study, problem of the study, object of study, significance of the
study, scope of the study, and definition of key terms.
1.1
Background
of the Study
Literature is one of human creation, as a written text based on the
fact. This is implied that literature is come from reality. Literature is a medium of cultural society which has the destiny of human life such as
their problem, conflict and struggle of life. It represented the story of reality in human thoughts,
feeling, behavior and attitudes originality through the imagination and
concrete situation. According to Griffith (1982:1) Literature gives pleasure,
it has a certain magic that transport us from the real world to seemingly more
remote and enjoyable place. People who read literature will get enjoyment
because it gives information, knowledge and experience about human daily life.
In line with the statement above the literature became a historical
mentality of peculiar perspective. It also spread out the philosophy, idea,
memory, notion and point of view in cultural construction of reality. Thus
literature is presented and reported story as the skeleton of evidence from the
author’s mind to the reader.
Novel is part of
the literature. It is as the
representative of human condition against the effort to reach the purpose of
living perfectness. In other words, literature is a context of hooping
ideology, when the author shows the
idea through the characters and figure in
the text the social reality in that decade.
In this research, the writer would like
to present the politeness strategy on the novel of Oliver Twist by Charles
Dickens. Politeness is the expression of the speakers’ intention to mitigate
face threats carried by certain face threatening acts toward another (Mills,
2003, p. 6). Being polite therefore consists of attempting to save face for
another. Politeness theory states that some speech acts threaten others’ face
needs. Politeness principles have been considered to have wide descriptive
power in respect of language use (Lakoff, 1972, 1973).
It is added by Brown & Levinson
(1978, 1987) that language has a social function as a tool to make connection
between human beings. Without language, it seems impossible for people to
interact with other in daily life because language can express people’s
feeling, willing, option etc (Chaer and Agustina, 1995:19) In short; language
is the oral symbols that represent meaning as they are related to real life
situation. In case of communication, the speaker will choose the strategies to
have polite conversation. People use politeness strategies in order to get
their conversation run well and go smoothly. Brown and Levinson also state that:
Politeness strategies are developed in order
to save the hearers' "face." Face refers to the respect that an
individual has for him or herself, and maintaining that "self-esteem"
in public or in private situations. Usually you try to avoid embarrassing the
other person, or making them feel uncomfortable. Face Threatening Acts (FTA's)
are acts that infringe on the hearers' need to maintain his/her self esteem,
and be respected.(1978, in Grundy, 2000: 156)
Thus, politeness strategies are
developed in order to formulate messages in order to save the hearer’s face
when face threatening acts are inevitable or desired. This means that the
speaker avoids embarrassing the listener or making him feels uncomfortable.
(http:// www. Free Wikipedia. Politeness.Com)
In order to
create a comfortable and polite conversation, a speakers use strategies called
“politeness strategy “. It is used to make conversation goes on well smoothly.
Brown and Levinson (in Goody, 1996: 2) state that one recognizes what people
are doing in verbal exchange (e.g Requesting, offering, criticizing) not so
much by what they overtly claim to be doing as in the fine linguistic detail of
their utterance. Although, speaking politeness shows the feeling of
speakers.
Face needs are thought of as the desire
to be appreciated and protected.
Face is further broken down into two
different categories: positive and negative face. Positive face is the desire
to be liked and appreciated and designed to meet the face needs by performing
an action like complimenting or showing concern for another person. Negative
face is the desire to be autonomous and not to infringe on the other person.
Negative politeness is designed to protect the other person when negative face
needs are threatened. Thus there are different strategies to handle face
threatening acts and these strategies are put into a hierarchy of
effectiveness. According to Grundy (2000:156), Brown and Levinson said that
face comes in two varieties, positive face and negative face. Positive face is
a person wish to be well thought of. Its manifestation may include the desire
admired by others. Negative politeness is our wish not to be imposed on by
others and to be allowed to go about our business unimpeded.
In the previous research, Mukarromah
(2002) studies politeness used by the female and male broadcasters of Andika
Lugas Swara (Andalus) FM Malang. The focus of this study is to find out the
terms of politeness used by female and male broadcasters of Ajang Gaya Kata dan
Kreasi (Agasi) program in Andika Lugas Swara (Andalus) FM radio station Malang.
It is intended to know the terms or strategies they use in their two hours presentation.
Yuli Fitriana (2007) from Islamic University
of Malang studied the politeness strategy in John Grisham’s novel. Her research
describes politeness strategies used in the dialogues of the characters in the
novel. She explains that four strategies are applied by the portrayed
characters in their dialogues in the novel.
It is very interesting to analyze the
politeness strategy in the novel characters to have more views about human
characteristic in detail especially through dialogues, gestures, face
expression and setting of the novel.
Based on the explanation above the
writer wants to analyze the politeness strategy in the main characters of
Oliver Twist in Charles Dickens’ novel.
They are Nancy, Oliver, and Fagin (the Jewish person). The writer
expects that there is a new impact from the analysis process in order to have a
new knowledge in the term of politeness strategy.
1.2 Statement of
problem
Based on the background above, the problems of this
study are stated as follows:
1. What
is the main characters’ politeness strategy in Charles Dickens’s Novel “Oliver
Twist”?
2. In
what occasion the politeness strategy is used by the main characters in Charles
Dickens’s Novel “Oliver Twist”?
1.3.
Purpose of the Study
Based on the
statement of the problem above, the purpose of the study is:
1. To
know the main characters’ politeness strategy in Charles Dickens’s Novel
“Oliver Twist”
2. To
know the main characters’ occasion of politeness strategy is used in Charles
Dickens’s Novel “Oliver Twist”
1.4.
Significance of Study
The result of this study
is expected to be useful for the readers about the story of Oliver Twist, thus
they may know the causes and the impact of politeness strategy in human life.
The writer also hopes it can give contribution to the further researchers who
want to conduct the similar term of study with different topic.
1.5.
Scope and Limitation
In this study the
researcher focuses on the main characters’ politeness strategy in the Oliver
Twist by Charles Dickens, prominently in the content area of daily conversation
and occasion indeed, including the way of gestures and face expression.
1.6 Definition of the
key term
In order to avoid misinterpretation among the
readers of this research, the writer explains the definition of the key term
below according to their meaning and contexts.
1. Analysis
is a description about the element that has purpose to comprehend the relationship
between one element and others in supporting the meaning of literary work
(Sudjiman, 1964: 4).
2. Politeness
strategies are communicative devices for redressing the treats inherent in
verbal and nonverbal utterances (Brown and Levinson. 1978).
3. Novel
is along work of narrative prose fiction, because of its length; a novel can
picture life with all of its richness, complexity, and contradiction. (MacMillan,
1987:491)
4. The
main Character is the major character that specializes plays the most rule of
the story in the novel. They have capacity to run over the story whether its
good or bad ending.
5. Oliver
twist (main character) is a young mild boy who was lived in the orphanage house
for seven years before he start the unforgettable dangerous journey to find his
destiny. He is the main character of
Dicken’s most popular novel.
CHAPTER III
This chapter presents the method which was used in
the study. It discusses about
the research design,
research data and research sources, research instrument, data collection and
data analysis.
3.1. Research Design
This study was designed to get information
concerning the politeness strategies.
This research uses
the qualitative research because of some factors. Firstly the data gained
utterances of the main character of
Oliver Twist that take the form of words and
sentences rather than numbers. Secondly the hypothesis is not
formulated in the beginning of the research since the research merely
describes the politeness used in the Oliver
Twist novel. And this study was designed to get
information concerning with the politeness phenomena. In this case,
the study used the sociolinguistic approach since the researcher tried to
study language phenomena that is politeness which is used by people in conversation.
This study had examined the utterances of the Oliver’s dialogue by using Brown and Levinson theory.
3.2. Data Sources and
Research
The source of this research is movie entitled “Oliver Twist” because all conversation
was obtained from novel.
This Research obtained the
data by watching and analyzing a
novel, the data was the conversation or utterances which
contained politeness strategies by Charles
Dicken’s novel Oliver Twist.
3.3. Research
Instrument
Research instrument is important to obtain the data
of this study for it is a set
of method which is used to collect the data. The researcher is the main instrument, because it
is impossible to interview and investigate the data directly without interpreting
the researcher herself.
3.5. Data Collection
In data collection, the researcher initially reading novel. Next step is selecting the utterance
which part of the main character’s conversation that represents the politeness
strategies of the novel.
The next is reading the context
and classifying the utterance into bald on record strategy, positive politeness strategy,
negative politeness strategy and off record strategy.
3.6. Data Analysis
In data analysis, the researcher explains and
categorizing the main character’s
conversation into the part of politeness strategies based on Brown and Levinson theory. The
next step is concluding the whole data analyzed to obtain the answer of research
question.
