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regretting and declaration the act of resigning, dismissing. In this research, the illocutionary acts are the acts which are shown by the students when they
communicate with the lecturers.
3. Politeness
According to Watts, Ide and Ehlich 2005, politeness can be seen as the behavioral constraints which may help people in the
society to achieve “effective social living” p. 2. Moreover, politeness also refers to a concept of “presentation
of self” in the interpersonal relationship that is important to maintain social interaction with its individual and group goals. In this research, politeness is
related to language choice provided by the students in social interaction with the lecturers.
4. Politeness strategies
Brown and Levinson 1987 have conducted a deep study on politeness, specifically on the strategies of politeness. Based on their study, politeness
strategies are used to arrange the statement or utterances in order to show an awareness of the face when face threatening acts FTA is likely to happen. FTA
itself is defined as the acts which may threaten the face wants of the hearer andor the speaker Brown Levinson, 1987. Brown and Levinson also define face as
public self-image which every member of society wants to claim for himself. There are four strategies of politeness which are proposed by Brown and Levinson
1987, namely bald on record, positive politeness, negative politeness and off record p. 92. In this study, politeness strategies will
deal with students‟ language PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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choice in order to minimize the face threats in their written messages sent to the lecturers.
5. Written communication
Communication is defined as the way in which the process of giving, receiving or exchanging messages is understood by both the speaker and also the
hearers. McQuail and Windahl 1993 also describe that communication can be any of „an action on others, an interaction with others and a reaction to others‟ p.
5. Communication itself can be held in two ways, namely spoken and written ways. In the written form, the messages are transformed using written symbols,
via words and sentences for instance. Hence, written communication can be defined as the way of giving, receiving or exchanging the written symbols which
happens between two people or more. Written communication may be held in the form of letters, faxes, emails, reports, memos and even advertisements. In this
research, written communication which will be used is in the form of text message and email.
