Vanessa Keller : The president wants you to be the scientific
face of the lottery, help us market the concept, the credibili
ty. In exchange, we’ll drop the charge and restore your job once you
return the embryo. Dr. Alison Lennon : The embryo is the only thing keeping me alive.
Vanessa Keller : Dr. Lennon, I am trying to help you but you have
to trust me.
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Vanessa tries to avoid any conflict with Dr. Lennon for two reasons. First, it is the first time for her to have a conversation with Dr. Lennon.
Second, in this moment, Dr. Lennon is psychologically depressed for getting fired from her previous job. In response to this condition, Vanessa performs
an indirect command which contains a positive politeness strategy by indicating that they can get mutual benefits if Dr. Lennon agrees to cooperate
with her. Vanessa clearly states her intention by saying “The president wants
you to be the scientific face of the lottery, help us market the concept, the credibility”. In this utterance, it is clear that Vanessa and the government will
get advantages if Dr. Lennon agrees to join them. However, in the second utterance
,
Vanessa shows that Dr. Lennon will get benefits as the rewards for joining
them. Vanessa says “In exchange, we’ll drop the charge and restore your job once you return the embryo”. The
second utterance does not only contain an offer from Vanessa but it also contains a threat. If Dr. Lennon agrees to cooperate, she will get her job back.
However, if she rejects the offer, the government will fill the charge for her because she evidently steals one of the embryos from DOH after getting fired
by her boss, Darius Hayes.
The third example is the conversation between Darius and the terrorist who kidnapped the U. S diplomats in China.
Darius is the terrorist’s boss and he is the man behind the abduction of the U.S diplomats in Shanghai. In the
previous moment, Darius employs the terrorist to kidnap the diplomats as the hostages in order to demand five embryos to the U.S government. However,
Thomas Westwood as the U.S president refuses to give any embryo to the terrorist. Finally, the president decides to notify the Chinese government and
asks them to destroy the terrorist’s hideout. In this moment, there is only one
terrorist who survived from the attack. Then, he contacts Darius and accuses him for the trouble. Darius does not deny the accusation but he gives the
terrorist a command to relax since he is going to take care of the problem. Terrorist
: You sold us out, didn’t you? You notify Chinese
army. You called them, you set us up. Darius Hayes
: Relax, I’m going to take care of everything, I
promise.
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In this example, Darius performs a direct command which is followed by an attempt to seek for an agreement. He tries to make his man calm down
by promising to take care all the mess. Although he performs a direct command, he also tries to minimize the attack toward the hearer
’s positive face wants. In short, this example is considered as the example of positive
politeness strategy because the speaker takes the hearer ’s positive face wants
into consideration in making utterances. In his utterance, Darius tries to seek for an agreement by conveying that both participants are cooperators.
Therefore, both Darius and the terrorist will get mutual benefits if the terrorist
follows the command. Darius will get the benefit for being undisturbedb by the terrorist. On the other hand, the terrorist will get the advantages if Darius
takes care of all the problems. In short, in this example, Darius simply makes his man calm down.
d. Negative politeness
Negative politeness strategies are found in 3 data and all of them are performed by Vanessa Keller. In this particular context, Vanessa performs
negative politeness stategy for two conditions. First, Vanessa intends to respect the hearer
’s negative face wants. Second, in certain degree Vanessa expresses her pessimism in her command. It seems that Vanessa herself is not
sure that the addresse is capable to obey her order. It is the reason behind Vanessa
’s employment of negative politeness strategy in the form of question. On the other hand, Darius does not perform any utterance in the
form of negative politeness strategy. It is because in the first season of The Lottery TV Series, Darius does not find any advantage to perform this
strategy. In order to give deeper explanations, more illustration will be given in the following examples.
The first example is a discussion among the White House staffs in response to the terrorist’s demands. Vanessa and the others evaluate the video
sent by the terrorist. Vanessa notices that in the video, Nathan as one of the hostages tries to give certain information by murmuring something. Then,
Vanessa commands a staff to replay the video. Vanessa Keller
: What’s he doing? A staff in the White House : What do you mean?
Vanessa Keller : Nathan. Can you blow it up and rewind
the video feed? Stop, there play it.
He’s
saying something or mouthing something.
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In this situation, it is clear that Vanessa has higher authority since she is the representative of the president. She can perform a command with any
strategy or form. However, she chooses to perform negative politeness strategy by including
modal auxiliary “can” in the beginning of her utterance. When she says “Can you blow it up and rewind the video?”, the utterance is
in the question form but it is not really a question since she knows exactly that the staff is able to do
it. The use of modal auxiliary “can” in the utterance slightly reduces the impact on the heare
r’s negative face which is the want for being independent and unimpeded by others.
In line with the first example, this second conversation is set in the same place and context of situation. In this second example, she asks the staff
to zoom in the video. She wants to see Nathan’s mouth closely, to confirm whether it is a prayer or something else.
A staff in the White House : looks like he’s praying.
Darius Hayes : Well in the situation like this...
Vanessa Keller
: He’s not praying. Can you enlarge it?
Get a lips reader here now.
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Similar to the first example, in this utterance
,
Vanessa also chooses to perform negative politeness strategy. She uses
modal auxiliary “can” which is structured in
question form to reduce the threat on the addressee’s negative face wants. Moreover, after she performs negative politeness of command by
stating “Can you enlarge it?”, she gives a further command in the form of
bald on record by saying “Get a lips reader here now”. These two commands are aimed at different addressees and for different purposes. The first
command is to analyze the video and the second command is to find a lip reader to read the movement of Nathan’s mouth.
2. The Realizations of Politeness Strategies
According to Brown and Levinson, politeness strategies can be realized in nine forms. However, there are only five forms that are found in the first
season of The Lottery TV Series. These five forms are non minimization, inviting conversational implicature, claiming for common ground, conveying
that both participants are cooperators, and being direct.
a. Non Minimization
Since non minimization is the only way to realize bald on record politeness strategy, therefore, the speakers will get advantages for being clear
and effective. Moreover, non minimization can also be used to warn and threaten the hearer by directly attacking the hearer
’s face wants. In the first season of The Lottery TV Series, this realization is mostly performed by
Vanessa with 11 utterances. This strategy is intended to show Vanessa’s
purposes in making a command which are to warn her brother and to threaten the DOH’s staff in another circumstances. On the other hand, Darius only
performs this realization in three utterances since he faces a different type of addressee compared to Vanesssa. However, both speakers can take full
advantages from bald on record politeness strategy by non minimizations.
