view, but also theoretical advantages, since it allows us to obtain more stereotypical answers, the prototype
of the variants which may occur in an individual’s actual speech, as pointed out by Hill, Ide, Ikuta, Kawasaki and Ogino 1986: 353.
Moreover, it is undoubtedly useful to investigate what type of language people consciously generate in their minds, that
is, what the informants’ linguistic attitudes are. The discourse completion test offers the opportunity in an accurate way. The
researcher agreed with Eisentenstein and Bodman 1986: 169 about their statement that learners were not able to provide native-like responses in a relatively
unpressured situation such as this, it would be unlikely that they would be able to function more effectively in face-to-face interactions with their accompanying
pressures and constraints. For all these reasons, the instrument employed to collect
the data has been a discourse completion test DCT.
The 90 participants were chosen as the sample for this research. The researcher used purposeful random sampling technique. As stated by Lodico,
Spaulding, and Voegtle 2006, purposeful sampling is a procedure where the researcher identifies key informants: people who have some specific knowledge
about the topic being investigated, while the purposeful random sampling is the type of purposeful sampling which is followed by a randomization procedure pp.
140-141. In this research, the researcher chose 95 students out of 180 students in the English Language Education Study Program students Sanata Dharma
University. Those participants were the people who understood about politeness and request statements because they had already learned linguistics and structure.
The participants were the eighth semester students in the English Language
Education Study Program of Sanata Dharma University. The researcher asked them to fulfill the questionnaires in around 20 minutes and collected the questionnaires
back.
E. Data Analysis
The questionnaires were the type of discourse completion test DCT questionnaires. Adapted in 1982 by Blum-Kulka for the purpose of investigating
speech acts, the discourse completion test DCT is a questionnaire containing a set of very briefly described situations designed to elicit a particular speech act.
The discourse completion test which was used in this study was composed in two socially differentiated situations which vary depending on the
interlocutors’ relationship, that is, on the dimensions of dominance or social power, and social
distance or familiarity. Therefore, it has allowed us to investigate also the effect of social factors on those realization patters. The situations S were as follows:
S1 You will have a final examination next week. You skipped two
previous meetings for a certain subject. You do not have the notes of those days’ materials now. You need those notes to catch up the
materials, so you try to get them from your friend. What do you say?
S2 You will have a final examination next week. You skipped two
previous meetings for a certain subject. You do not have the notes of those days’ materials now. You need those notes to catch up the
materials, so you try to get them from your lecturer. What do you say?
The variable of social power had two possible values: hearer’s dominance or
equal power between the speaker and the hearer. Hearer’s dominance occurred
because the hearer has higher power and social status than the speaker. Equality occurs between the participant and a friend, because they have the same power
and social status. Following Bonikowska 1988, Trosborg 1995 and Sasaki 1998, the situations had been designed in such way that the participants would
have found them familiar. The first analysis was done in order to answer the first research problem. In this process, the researcher classified the participants’
answers into a table illustrated in table 3.1 and 3.2. After that, the researcher counted the numbers of first person deixis and second person deixis which
appeared using tally technique. The theory of politeness and indirectness by Leech and the arrangement of politeness statements by Blum-Kulka, which contains nine
types of polite request statements, were used to analyze the data provided by the participants. This was to answer the second research problem. B
ased on Leech’s and Blum-
Kulka’s theories, request which is more indirect shows the more politeness.
From the participants’ answers in the questionnaires, the researcher grouped the answers into those nine types of requests. At last, the researcher
concluded the types of request statements used by the eighth semester students in the English Language Education Study Program of Sanata Dharma University.
