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
In line with the limitation of the problems above, there are two questions to be formulated in this study. They are as follows.
1. What are types of request strategies found in the six selected English
textbooks?
2. What contextual information of the dialogues can be found in the
textbooks?
E. Objectives of the Research
Based on the formulated research problems stated above, the objectives of this study can be formulated for the purpose of providing answers to the problems
as in the following. 1.
To investigate possible strategies in making requests in dialogues
which can be found in the six selected English textbooks.
2. To investigate contextual information of the dialogues available in
the textbooks. F.
Significance of the Research
Since this study mainly discusses the request function in English textbooks, this study basically contributes some knowledge related to language in
use existing in English textbooks. Thus, there are some advantages of this study which can be formulated as follows.
1. To English teachers, this can guide teachers to be more aware of materials
related to the function of request so that they can explain why certain requesters use particular wordsphrasesclausessentencesutterances to
make requests and so that they can provide other different examples of requests or dialogues, and to remind them to be able to modify the
materials whenever contextual information is missing in the dialogues which may prevent students from better understanding the materials.
2. To materials developers, it is expected that this study can contribute ideas
and suggestions in choosing and realizing dialogues containing the
function of request in English textbooks to provide more resourceful dialogues or conversations andor tasks.
3. To other researchers, this study can be a reference and provide information
to conduct research in the related field in the future.
8
CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
