but it also attempts to relate the analysis and the pedagogical purposes in textbooks for language learning e.g. by selecting appropriate research instruments.
The textbooks analyzed in this study are taken from two different levels of students’ grades. They are textbooks for students of Junior High School and those
of Senior High School. The reason beyond this decision is that it is quite difficult to find
textbooks for only one level of students’ grade written by various authors. One author may write multiple textbooks, but the contents of the books, in this case
the dialogues, seems to be able to be identified to have similarities. Therefore, the choice of analyzing textbooks from different authors should also be prioritized.
B. Focus of the Research
The function of request may frequently occur in dialogues in English textbooks that may contain some pragmatic features that can be analyzed. In this
study, the focus of the research is on analyzing the request found in all the dialogues in the six selected English textbooks.
C. Limitation of the Problems
There are several aspects of pragmatic features which can be analyzed such as speech acts, presuppossition and entailment, cooperation and implicature,
politeness and face wants, etc. This study is limited to two aspects. They are request strategies and contextual information.
The focus of the analysis of request strategies in this study lies upon the use of peripheral modifications and request strategy types. The analysis of the
request strategy types, however, is carried out to support the analysis of peripheral modifications, and is used to find out any possible reasons beyond the use of certain
peripheral modifications. There is a significant distinction between studies analyzing politeness strategies and those investigating the use of peripheral
modifications. Analyzing politeness strategies seems to figure out how requests are delivered e.g. by employing on-record, off-record, face-saving act, bald on record,
or positive andor negative strategies Brown Levinson, 1987; Yule, 1996. On the other hand, analyzing request strategies is an attempt to figure
wordsclausessentences modifying the requests existing in dialogues. Therefore, if the analysis of politeness strategies is about finding out how to deliver requests, the
analysis of request strategies is about finding out how to modify requests. Contextual information is analyzed in this study to find out what factors
surround the dialogues where requests take place e.g. the relationship between the requester and the requestee. Also, due to the limited knowledge, time and theories,
this study does not take into account for pictures accompanying dialogues.
D. Formulation of the Problems
