Politeness Strategies Used by the Students

53 The message written by Student 23 above is slightly similar to the previous message. The speaker was specific and focused in conveying hisher meaning through a long sentence. Heshe was also being indirect by saying, “I’d like to …” which was the characteristic of negative politeness. Besides the negative politeness which could be seen in the messages, there were two participants who used bald on record in conveying their meaning based on scenario one. In the message written by Student 7 above, the speaker directly said hisher intention to the hearer. The speaker only told hisher name to the lecturer and then went straight to tell hisher intention. The characteristic of bald on record is the speaker may do the act in the most direct, clear and concise way. In that message, the speaker fulfilled those characteristics. Therefore, that message could be categorized as bald on record. In the message written by Student 10 above, the speaker uttered hisher meaning directly without even greeting the hearer. Even, the speaker used an imperative form in telling about hisher intention by saying, “Give …” It could be Student 23 Good morning Mrs. X, I’m sorry for the inconvenience. I’m name. I’d like to ask for your time to have consultation relate d to my proposal seminar. I’m sorry I can’t see you so that I send this message. So, when can I meet you for consulting my proposal seminar. Student 7 Excuse me Sir. My name … from D class. Do you have a spare time? Student 10 Good Give the time for meeting 54 seen that the speaker showed least politeness by having bald on record. Actually, that message also showed the complete absence of politeness. In the second scenario, most of the participants used the strategy of negative politeness. There were 16 messages which showed the use of negative politeness. The message written by Student 2 above shows some characteristics of negative politeness. The speaker used long sentences in conveying hisher meaning. Instead of directly saying hisher intention, the speaker said, “I would like to …” Moreover, heshe also used indirect form in hisher message. Student 4 above showed negative politeness by being indirect in conveying hisher meaning. Instead of saying, “I wait for your reply”, the speaker tended to say, “I’m looking forward for your reply.” That was the characteristic of negative politeness. On the other hand, there were seven participants who wrote their messages using bald on record strategy when they responded to the second scenario. They were being clear and direct in uttering their intention. Student 2 Good morning Miss. I am A. I would like to send my draft of final project. If you don’t mind would you check mine so that I can evaluate my work. Thank you Miss  Student 4 Mr.Ms. This is the draft of my final project. Please kindly check my draft. I’m looking forward for your replay. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 55 In the message written by Student 9 above, the speaker directly said hisher intention to the hearer. Even if the speaker used “please” in the message, heshe only said what they needed to say. Heshe did not say less or more than was required. Based on the message written by Student 7 above, it can be seen clearly that the speaker conveyed hisher meaning in the most direct way. The speaker did not use long sentence, but heshe only spoke the truth and be relevant to hisher intention. In scenario 2, there was a participant whose message was different to the other. Except the use of negative politeness and bald on record strategy, the participant did not show any politeness strategies in the message. In the message written by Student 10 above, the speaker only gave information about the task, hisher name and student number. There was no additional message given to the lecturer. It did not mean that the speaker was impolite. It meant that heshe did not show any politeness strategies and only gave the information needed in the message. Student 9 Sir, this is my draft for final project. Please kindly check it. Student 7 Good morning Miss. I have send my email. Student 10 Propsem final task, name, student number 56 In the third scenario, most of the participants showed negative politeness as the politeness strategy in their messages. There were 21 messages which showed negative politeness. Student 11 in that message conveyed hisher meaning through a long sentence. Heshe also begged for the hearer‟s forgiveness by saying, “I am sorry …” The message was specific and focused, as both factors were two of the characteristics of negative politeness. This example is slightly similar to the previous one. Student 17 told hisher intention in a long sentence. Moreover, heshe also showed the action of begging forgiveness in a polite way, which is the characteristic of negative politeness. Besides negative politeness, there were three participants who showed bald on record strategy in their messages. Their messages were stated as bald on record because the speaker wrote them in the most direct and concise way. Student 11 Miss this is my fix final project. I am sorry because I have sent the file which is not fix before. But this is the fix one. Thank you Miss.  Student 17 Good morning miss. I’m sorry there is a mistake on my previous work, so I send you my revision. I hope you accept this one. Thank you very much. Student 8 Miss, this is my final ppt. I decided to revise it. Thank you. 57 In the message written by Student 8 above, the speaker conveyed hisher meaning in a direct form. Heshe only said what heshe needed to say without giving less or more information than was required. Student 10 said directly what heshe needed to say in the message above. Heshe did not give any additional information which was not hisher need. The characteristic of bald on record could be seen in that message; direct form, speak the truth, be relevant and avoid ambiguity. In the last scenario, all of the participants showed the strategy of negative politeness. All of them fulfilled the characteristics of negative politeness when writing their messages. In that message, Student 18 showed that heshe could not come to the consultation with a reason. Then, heshe asked for another time to have consultation. In conveying the meaning, the speaker was specific and focused. By looking at the message written by Student 23 above, we can see that the speaker used long sentences in conveying hisher meaning. Heshe was also Student 10 Excuse me Sir. This is the correct power point. Thankyou. Student 18 Good morning, Sir. I am very sorry because I could not come for today’s consultation because I got an accident in … I hope we can reschedule the consultation when you are available. Thank you, Sir. Student 23 Good morning. I’m name. I am sorry for not coming this afternoon as what we’ve planned. I got sick this morning and I cannot come to consult. Would you please give me other chance to have another consultation. 58 being indirect by saying, “Would you please …” That was one of the characteristics of negative politeness strategy. The results show that almost all of the participants used politeness strategies, which were proposed by Brown and Levinson 1987, when they wrote written messages to the lecturers. There was only one participant, in one scenario, who did not show any politeness strategies. Most of the participants showed negative politeness as the politeness strategies when sending the written messages to the lecturers. Few of them showed the strategy of bald on record in their messages. The results are slightly similar to the predicted results that the students showed the strategy of negative politeness when sending the messages to the lecturers who had higher social status than the students did. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 59

CHAPTER V CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATION

This chapter contains two parts, namely conclusions and recommendation. The first part is conclusions which aim to summarize the major findings of the research. The second part is recommendation which spells out the recommendations for future research and current practice.

A. Conclusions

There are two objectives in this study. The first is to discover the types of illocutionary acts that appeared in the written messages of seventh semester students of ELESP sent to the lecturers, and the second is to analyze politeness strategies that seventh semester students of ELESP tended to consider in their written messages sent to the lecturers. The data were taken using questionnaire which was designed using Discourse Completion Test DCT. There were four scenarios in the questionnaire in which each of the participants had to respond to those scenarios. In order to discover the first objective of this study, the data were analyzed using the theory of speech acts, particularly illocutionary acts, proposed by Searle 1969. Besides, the theory of politeness strategies by Brown and Levinson 1987 was used to discover the second objectives of this study. The first finding stated that the seventh semester students in English Language Education Study Program of Sanata Dharma University in batch 2012 PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 60 showed different acts as their responses to the four scenarios. Most of the participants showed the similar acts when they were facing certain situations. However, some of them gave responses which were not similar to the others when they were responding to the same case in the same scenario. For the first scenario, almost all of the participants showed directive acts, which were the act of requesting and commanding. There were three participants who did not show any of the illocutionary acts. In the second scenario, most of the participants showed assertive act, which was the act of reporting. Some others showed both assertive and directive acts. Besides, there was a participant who did not show any of the illocutionary acts. The third and fourth scenarios showed quite similar results. The participants showed more than one illocutionary act when responding to these two scenarios. The participants showed assertive, directive, commissive and expressive acts when they were sending the written messages based on the third and fourth scenario. The various results show ed that people‟s responses might be different from one to another even when they were facing the same case. The finding confirmed Searle‟s 1969 theory which says that in actual speech situations, the context will make it clear what the illocutionary act of the utterance is. On the contrary, it seems that in natural language use, some of illocutionary acts, which are indicated by a variety of devices, are fairly complicated in the practice p. 30-31. The second finding found that almost all of the participants, who were students, showed their politeness to their lecturers who have higher social status than they do. In showing their politeness, the participants used politeness PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 61 strategies in their written messages. There was only a participant who did not show any politeness strategies when responding to a scenario because the speaker only gave information related to the topic. The other participants showed two politeness strategies, namely negative politeness and bald on record. Few of the participants showed bald on record as their politeness strategies. This strategy is said as the most direct, clear and concise way to show politeness. Even, by having this strategy, the utterances will be considered as the complete absence of politeness. On the contrary, most of the participants showed negative politeness as the politeness strategies when sending the written messages to the lecturers. They sent the written messages to the lecturer in a polite, formal and indirect way through long sentences in an attempt to save the hearer‟s negative face. The finding confirmed Brown and Levinson‟s 1987 theory which says that people tend to use negative politeness as their strategy to show politeness to other people who have higher social status than they do p. 178.

B. Recommendation

In this section, the researcher would like to give some recommendations for future research and current practices related to the topic.

1. Future Researchers

The researcher believes that this research can be used as a useful reference for future research, particularly in pragmatics field. The researcher hopes that later, there are other researchers who are willing to conduct a deeper research on PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 62 pragmatics, particularly related to illocutionary acts and politeness strategies. The future researchers may conduct a deeper research with wider participants as the sample. The wider participants will give more data so that they can give more accurate results on the topic which is discussed. By having wider participants, the study can be conducted using a mixed method, qualitative and quantitative. It will be more challenging since this study only used a qualitative method. Other studies on showing the illocutionary acts and politeness strategies in spoken way are recommended. Moreover, the participants can be people who have same social status. It will have different results and findings from this study.

2. English Lecturers

The researcher suggests that English lecturers, or even English teachers, should give more attention to students‟ needs in everyday interaction. The focus will not only be on students‟ competence but also on students‟ ability to interact with other people. Pragmatics is one field that may help English lecturers to develop students‟ ability in communication and interaction since it focuses on how language is used by people in a certain context or situation. The knowledge of pragmatics, particularly speech acts and politeness, are needed so that students can understand how to communicate with other people in a good and polite way.

3. English Learners

English learners must know how to have good communication with other people. Therefore, they have to master the theory of pragmatics since it deals with people daily interaction. It may look non sense since actually communicating and interacting with people is our nature, we do not need to learn about it. However, 63 by mastering the theory behind the communication itself, it will help us to have successful communication with others and avoid misunderstanding that may happen if we do not have deeper understanding about communication, both in spoken and written ways.