Background of the Research

1

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Research

English textbooks commonly comprise two types of English texts as the learning materials to be taught to students, namely 1 genres such as descriptive texts, narrative texts, explanatory texts, procedure texts, hortatory texts, etc. and 2 functions such as greeting, introducing selfothers, giving informationopinionsuggestionspermission, thanking, complimenting, persuading, requesting, and etc. These two types of English texts can be delivered in books through examples, questions to answer and practices like tasks and activities. More than those are usually other language inputs which help the students learn the language, English, like grammar and vocabularies. The form of texts belonging to members of genres is written language as seen from the generic structures of the texts. On the other hand, functions which include various types of texts can be understood as spoken language. In English textbooks, genres, the materials regarding written language, are usually delivered in two parts of the learning materials i.e. reading and writing sections while functions are delivered in listening and speaking sections. The fact that English textbooks provide functions shows that the communicative competence, as introduced by Hymes 1975 which initiates students to use the language appropriately depending on the situations of the talks and not only to learn about the language like knowing how to form sentences, is important. This can also be comprehended that students in learning functions are somewhat exposed to pragmatic features although they may not be aware of learning them. Pragmatic features such as speech acts, implicature, presupposition, entailment, etc. can surely be found in English textbooks especially in dialogues. Nevertheless, these pragmatic features are not directly stated or explained. Despite the significant differences between constructed dialogues as in textbooks and naturally-occurring dialogues as in natural conversations, English textbooks in Indonesia contain many dialogues with pragmatic knowledge included. Moreover, one thing to keep in mind is that the decision of constructing the dialogues also follows the principles of the implemented curriculum and syllabus so that the materials are on track of the pedagogical purposes. This fact, however, cannot be used as an excuse to not investigate the pragmatic knowledge existing in English textbooks. Investigating pragmatic knowledge in English textbooks can still be carried out as long as the investigation pays attention to the boundaries between the linguistic aspects under the pragmatic analysis and the pedagogical purposes of the textbook writings. There have been some studies focusing the analysis on discovering the pragmatic knowledgefeatures in English textbooks especially those investigating the existence of pragmatic featuresinformation, politeness strategies and speech acts in English textbooks Tri Wijayanto, 2014; Tr ần Thị Phượng, 2011; Mino Alemi, 2013; Sirion Wichien, 2012. The pragmatic analysis which focuses only on request narrowed down to the request strategies namely peripheral modifications in English textbooks, however, does not seem to receive much attention. Therefore, a study investigating this issue in English textbooks seems worth conducting to provide a different perspective in the linguistic field as well as in the educational field. Also, an investigation of contextual information surrounding dialogues where requests are made is also important to support the analysis of the request. There are two main reasons why this study places request as the focus. First, request requires something like goods or service from addresseesrequestees, and referring to the definition of request by Searle 1979, Brown and Levinson 1987 and Trosborg 1995, making requests seems to interfere andor bother the addresseesrequestees. On the other hand, functions like suggesting, enocouraging, offering something, asking for and giving information, complimenting etc. do not disturbbother others or addresses’s face if reffering to Brown and Levinson 1987 and Yule’s 1996 term. Since request imposes the requesters’ wants on requestees, strategies may need to be employed in order to increase the possibility of the compliance of the request. Thus, making requests is sometimes difficult. Second, requests can be made by anyone such as children, adults, authorized and unauthorized people like president, maid, merchants, teachers, secretaries, etc. as compared to other functions like commanding and giving permissions which seem to be probably done by only authorized people or those socially having more power. Thus, request has a wider scope in the sense of the involvement of participants. Furthermore, English textbooks precisely in Indonesia are developed in reference to the implemented curriculum and the syllabus. This study, therefore, also accounts for the pedagogical purposes in textbooks for language learning in order to provide a relevant and resourceful analysis. In other words, this study does not only analyze the linguistic elements under the discussion of pragmatic analysis, but it also attempts to relate the analysis and the pedagogical purposes in textbooks for language learning e.g. by selecting appropriate research instruments. The textbooks analyzed in this study are taken from two different levels of students’ grades. They are textbooks for students of Junior High School and those of Senior High School. The reason beyond this decision is that it is quite difficult to find textbooks for only one level of students’ grade written by various authors. One author may write multiple textbooks, but the contents of the books, in this case the dialogues, seems to be able to be identified to have similarities. Therefore, the choice of analyzing textbooks from different authors should also be prioritized.

B. Focus of the Research