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H. Politeness Strategy of Criticism
A study of politeness strategy to employ criticism has been conducted by Jauhari 2010 in Indonesian language. Through a paper entitled Kritik dalam
Masyarakat Jawa A Speech Act of Criticism in Javanese, Jauhari tries to figure
out the politeness strategy done by the people to criticize each other using Brown and Levinson theory. The study was done in the governance office. The result of
this study shows that people having subordinate status do the strategy of negative politeness
and strategy don’t do the FTA when criticizing people having greater authority. Meanwhile those who have superior status tend to use bald on-record
strategy to criticize people. This study also reveals that the most influence factor is the relative power owned by Javanese people.
More specific study about the strategy of criticism was conducted by Riekkinen 2009 entitled Softening Criticism: The Use of Lexical Hedges in
Academic Spoken Interaction . Through the study, Riekkinen wants to describe
how native speakers of English and non-native speakers of English use hedges when giving criticism in face-to-face situations. The result of this study shows
that both groups use lexical hedges when giving criticism, although the non-native speakers of English do so slightly less and also in a less varied way.
Meanwhile, in this research, I conduct a study to explore the politeness strategy to extend criticism used by the characters in the film entitled The Ugly
Truth . The criticism utterances are analyzed with politeness strategy by Brown
and Levinson theory.
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I. The Synopsis of the Movie The Ugly Truth
Abby Richter Katherine Heigl is a morning show TV producer in Sacramento, California. Coming home from a disastrous date one night, she
happens to see a segment of a local television show, The Ugly Truth, run by Mike Chadway Gerard Butler, whose cynicism about relationships prompts Abby to
call into the show to argue with him on-air. The next day, she discovers that the station is threatening to cancel her show because of its poor ratings, and the
station owner has hired Mike to do a segment on her show to bring them back up. At first, the two have a rocky relationship; Abby thinks Mike is crass and
disgusting while Mike finds Abby to be a control freak. Nevertheless, when she meets the man of her dreams, a doctor named Colin Eric Winter living next to
her, Mike persuades her to follow his lead. She agrees to his helpful advice and if he can get her the man she wants, proving his theories on relationships, she will
work happily with him, but if Mike fails, he agrees to quit. Mike succeeds in improving the ratings of the show, helps bring the
married co-anchors closer together, and successfully guides Abby to be exactly what Colin would want. Mike is invited to appear on The Late Late Night Show
with Craig Ferguson and is being offered the chance to move to another network. Abby is forced to cancel a romantic weekend away with Colin, during which they
had planned to finally sleep together, and instead go with Mike and persuade him to stay with the morning show. After the show, they go for drinks and dancing,
and Mike admits he doesnt want to move and is happier to stay in Sacramento
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with his sister and nephew. In the elevator, they passionately kiss and almost get to the point of intense sex but leave for their separate rooms when the doors open.
Mike, dealing with his inner conflict of the intensity of his feelings for Abby, calls on her room only to find Colin has shown up to surprise her. He leaves Abby to be
with Colin. Abby is upset and soon realizes Colin only likes the woman she has been pretending to be, not the real her, and she breaks up with him.
Mike leaves for another local station, but ends up doing an outside broadcast at the same hot-air balloon festival as Abby, and he cannot resist
returning to argue with her when she kicks the new Mike Chadway imitator off the air and goes into a tirade about men. The balloon they are standing in takes off
while they argue and finally, Abby tells Mike she broke up with Colin, and Mike admits he loves her. Abby then kisses him and they are shown kissing
passionately while flying off in the balloon Lutz Smith, 2009.
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CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHOD
In this chapter III, I present the research method of this study. The method is used to reach the objectives of the research which is stated in chapter I. Here, I
begin with the explanation about the type of this research, data and the source of data and then continued with technique of collecting data, technique of coding
data, and technique of analyzing data.
A. Type of Research
The descriptive qualitative method is employed as the type of this research. Wiersma 1994 p.12 states that qualitative research has its origins in descriptive
analysis and is essentially an inductive process, reasoning from the specific situation to a general conclusion. Hence, qualitative research cannot be separated
from descriptive analysis. Descriptive research means the data are collected in the form of words,
sentences, or pictures having meaning other than merely number Moleong, 2001 p.6. Moreover, Bodgan Taylor in Moleong, 2001 p.3 states that qualitative
research is a research which presents descriptive data in the form of written and oral words of human and human behavior that can be observed
For those reasons, this research belongs to descriptive qualitative research since it focuses on the explanation of politeness strategies used by the characters
in the movie The Ugly Truth to criticize, to respond, and the factors which influence the characters to choose the strategy.
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