10 the atmosphere in a movie and they can build the conflicts which make the movie
or the literary works become more interesting. That is the reason why Roberts 1983 says that the appearance of characters is worth noticing that most writers
and film makers give physical features to a character in order to match them or contrast them with some aspects
of the character‟s mind and personality. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
11
CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
This chapter consists of two parts, namely the theoretical description and theoretical framework. Theoretical description presents about some theories which
are used as the basis of this study. Theoretical framework presents the summary of the theories which are employed to answer the research questions of the study and
the correlation between the theories and the research questions.
A. Theoretical Description
This section discusses several theories, namely theories on speech acts, pragmatics, and politeness strategies. Theory of speech acts is significant for this
study because this study is about politeness strategies which deal with the acts of speaking performed through the utterances. Pragmatics is also significant for this
study since it comprises speech acts which discuss how language is used for the communication. The theory of politeness strategies is significant for this study
because it is the primary theory of this study.
1. Speech Acts
Speech acts is part of sociolinguistics and under the scope of pragmatics study. The relationship between language and the context is the concern of
sociolinguistics study Holmes, 2001. Holmes 2001 adds that people‟s speech
provides clues to others about who they are, where they come from, and perhaps what kind of social experiences that they had. Sociolinguistics is related
12 to the language that is used whether or not the language is in line with the social
context. Besides, sociolinguistics is also related to the social behavior because when people do the communication, they also perform certain acts which may
represent what they really think about. Speech acts is also related to pragmatics study because speech acts is
under the scope of pragmatics study. Katz 1977 as cited in Levinson 1983 has a simpler definition about pragmatics.
Grammars are theories about the structure of sentence types while pragmatics theories, in contrast, do nothing explicate the structure of
linguistics constructions or grammatical properties and relations. They explicate the reasoning of speakers and hearers in working out the
correlations in a context of a sentence token with a proposition. In this respect, a pragmatic theory is part of performance. p. 8
As mentioned in the theory above, it can be said that pragmatics is neither related
with the structure of grammatical theories or the structure of linguistics. It is the reason of the speaker and the hearer work out to make the language appropriate
with the context of the communication. Levinson 1983 adds that “the term
pragmatics covers both context-dependent aspects of language structure and principles of language usage and understanding that have nothing or little to do
wit h linguistics structure” p. 9. In communication, people will not care about
how they produce certain sounds of a language. They concern more about the way they choose and apply the language for the communication. Therefore, the proper
language can be applied as well as the social context. Since the term pragmatics does not deal with linguistic structure, the study of speech acts is included in
pragmatics study because it deals with language use and the understanding of the PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
