Written communication Theoretical Description

25 chapter which are to analyze illocutionary acts and politeness strategies shown in the written messages. In order to answer those research problems, the researcher relied on the theories proposed by Searle 1969 and Brown and Levinson 1987. The first research problem aims to analyze the illocutionary acts which tended to appear in the written messages of seventh semester students sent to the lecturers. The researcher used the theory of speech acts, particularly related to illocutionary acts, proposed by Searle 1969 to answer this research problem. Searle 1969 proposes that speech acts can be divided into three categories, namely locutionary acts, illocutionary acts and perlocutionary acts. This research focused on illocutionary acts that may appear in students‟ utterances shown in their written messages. Illocutionary act itself is divided into five categories, namely assertive, directive, commissive, expressive and declaration. Based on the data which were gathered through questionnaire, the researcher could classify students‟ messages into those five categories of illocutionary acts. The classification might describe the illocutionary acts which appeared in students‟ written messages. The second research problem is going to analyze the politeness strategies which tended to be used by the students in their written messages sent to the lecturers. The theory of politeness strategies by Brown and Levinson 1987 was used as the main theory to answer this research problem. There are four kinds of strategies on politeness based on Brown an d Levinson‟s theory, namely bald on record, positive politeness, negative politeness and off record. The researcher used the four strategies to classify the utterances of the seventh semester students of PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 26 ELESP which could be seen in their written messages. Based on the classification, the researcher analyzed the politeness strategy which was mostly used by the students when they sent written messages to the lecturers. The relation of illocutionary acts and politeness itself can be seen in Leech‟s 1983 theory. Leech states that politeness is often a function of both: the standing features, such as the social distance between participants, and the dynamic features, such as the kind of illocutionary acts which are made by the speaker to the hearer request, advice, command, etc in order to produce appropriate politeness based on certain situation. Therefore, in this research, the focus was more on the function of politeness as dynamic features which used illocutionary acts to produce politeness by conducting politeness strategies. In our society, we must communicate with other people in a certain context and situation. As the example is in the educational context, the students have to communicate with the lecturers due to some needs and condition. Here, language is used as the media for communication to express our meaning. When we are communicating, especially in a written way, we have to consider the language that we use because it may differ from one social context to another. The reason why we use different language in different social context to express our meaning is to show politeness. One way to be polite in communicating is by using some strategies of politeness. Those strategies can be shown in our acts, particularly illocutionary acts, because we have to focus on both the language use that shows our politeness and the acts that we perform to the interlocutor. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI