Instruments and Data Gathering Technique

36 questionnaire. The acts here belonged to illocutionary acts which could be categorized into five, namely assertive, directive, commissive, expressive and declaration. The theory of illocutionary acts and its categories was based on Searle‟s theory 1969. The researcher categorized the students‟ responses for each of the scenarios based on those categories in table 3.1. Based on the categorization, the researcher would conclude the types of illocutionary acts seen in students‟ written messages when they responded to the case in the scenarios. Table 3.1: The Types of Illocutionary Acts on Students’ Written Messages based on the Scenarios Students Scenarios Type of Illocutionary Acts Assertive Directive Commissive Expressive Declaration Student 1 S1 S2 S3 S4 Student 2 S1 S2 S3 S4 Then, the researcher focused more on participants ‟ politeness when they showed their acts to the lecturers. The data would be categorized using table 3.2. The researcher categorized the students‟ responses into four strategies of politeness based on the theory from Brown and Levinson 1987. Based on the categorization, the researcher could conclude the politeness strategies which were 37 mostly used by the students when showing the illocutionary acts in communicating with the lecturers in written way. Table 3.2: The Politeness Strategies Shown by the Students Students Scenario Politeness Strategies Bald On Record Positive Politeness Negative Politeness Off Record Student 1 S1 S2 S3 S4 Student 2 S1 S2 S3 S4 The categorization belongs to coding process. Lodico, Spaulding and Voegtle 2006 explain coding as the process of data analysis which identifies different segments of the data that describe an issue and labels these segments using category names p. 305. In analyzing the data of this research, the researcher used axial coding which develops connection between main categories and subcategories Ary, Jacobs Sorensen, 2010, p. 465

F. Research Procedures

Here are the research procedures that were done by the researcher.

1. Deciding the topic

This step was taken at the very beginning of the research. Before starting to do the research, the researcher had to decide the topic which would be analyzed in 38 the research. The researcher was interested in linguistic field, particularly pragmatics. In connection with that, the researcher chose the topic related to pragmatics which became the main interest of the researcher in academic field. Therefore, in order to know whether the topic was researchable or not, the researcher had consultation with the thesis advisor to gain feedback.

2. Formulating the research problems

After having the topic which was accepted by the thesis advisor, the researcher started to formulate the research problems. The research problems had to be significant with the topic and the main purpose of the research. The whole research which was conducted would have to answer those research problems. The researcher formulated two research problems as stated in the first chapter.

3. Reviewing the literature

The research which was conducted by the researcher had to be based on theories. Therefore, the researcher needed to review lots of theories related to the topic. The theories which were reviewed were not only the theories of pragmatics, particularly speech acts and politeness, but the researcher also reviewed the theories of the research technique and method which was conducted in this research. A large number of theories were needed to validate this whole research.

4. Designing and distributing the questionnaire

In order to collect the data for this research, the researcher used the questionnaire as the instrument. Hence, before collecting the data, the researcher needed to design the questionnaire first. The questionnaire was designed by adapting discourse completion test DCT. First, the researcher designed the