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CHAPTER IV FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
This chapter consists of two sections: findings and discussion. The findings section presents the occurrence of refusals which contain positive and
negative politeness strategies in Boyhood in and the factors that influence a speaker in choosing a certain politeness strategy. Meanwhile, the discussion
section presents the description and the explanation of these two findings in detail.
A. Findings
Based on Brown and Levinson in Goody, 1978: 102, positive politeness has 15 strategies. Those strategies are noticing and attending to the hearer,
exaggerating, seeking agreement, avoiding disagreement, presupposing raisingasserting common ground, joking, asserting or presupposing speaker’s
knowledge of and concerns for hearer’s wants, offering and promising, being optimistic, including both speaker and hearer in the activity, giving or asking for
reasons, assuming or asserting reciprocity, and giving gifts to hearer. On the other hand, negative politeness has 10 strategies namely being
conventionally indirect, questioning and hedging, being pessimistic, minimizing the imposition, giving deference, apologizing, impersonalizing the speaker and the
hearer, stating the face threatening act as general rule, nominalizing, and going on record as incurring a debt or as not indebting the hearer.
46 However, not all strategies are performed by the characters in Boyhood.
The occurrence of positive and negative politeness strategies are presented in Table 2.
Table 2. Positive and Negative Politeness Strategies of Refusals Employed by the Characters in Boyhood
Types Strategies
Number of Datum
Positive Politeness
Intensifying interest to the hearer 17
Using in-group identity markers 22
Avoiding disagreement 1,2,5,13,19
Joking 16
Being optimistic 3,11,12
Including both speaker and hearer in the activity
5,7,21 Giving or asking for reasons
8,9,15,18,21 Giving gifts to hearer
24 Negative
Politeness Questioning and hedging
20 Minimizing the imposition
4,6,10,3 Apologizing
14 Stating the face threatening act as a general
rule 11
In Boyhood, the most dominant positive politeness strategies are avoiding disagreement and giving or asking for reasons. Avoiding disagreement is one of
the dominant strategies used by the characters since in refusing someone’s offer, request, command, or suggestion, at first, a speaker tends to show that heshe
agrees to do something that the hearer wants in order to make the hearer satisfied. Then, if the hearer’s face has been satisfied, the speaker will deliver hisher
refusal or disagreement since it will not hurt the hearer’s feeling. Another dominant positive politeness strategy used by the characters in this movie is
giving or asking for reasons. This happens since the hearer will feel more satisfied
47 if the speaker gives or asks a further reason about hisher refusal. It may lead the
hearer to feel that the speaker pays more attention towards himher and treats himher as a friend.
On the other hand, the most dominant strategy of negative politeness in Boyhood is minimizing the imposition. It happens since, in many cases, the
imposition is great enough so the characters try to reduce the tension by using the strategy of minimizing the imposition. By performing this strategy, the addressee
can accept the refusal without getting really upset or disappointed. In term of the second objective, there are two factors that influence a
speaker in choosing a certain type of politeness strategies. Those factors are payoff and relevant circumstances. Relevance circumstances consist of three
elements, namely social distance, relative power, and rank of imposition. In this research, payoff, as a prior assumption, is a factor that always
occurs in every conversation, which influences the speaker to choose the strategy between positive and negative politeness. Positive politeness strategy is more
dominant since the relationship between the characters is relatively close and there is no big difference in terms of age, social status, and power. On the other hand,
negative politeness strategies are only used in some conversations whose participants are not close. Since their relationship is not close, they tend to be
more careful in refusing other characters’ offer, suggestion, invitation, or request. The second factor which always influences a speaker to choose a certain
strategy is the relevant circumstances. Relevant circumstances consist of three elements: social distance, relative power, and rank of imposition. Based on the
