Background of the Research

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Research

As the member of society, people are constantly communicating with one another in order to keep in touch with them and to gain as well as to give information. The form of communication is divided into two types. They are verbal communication and non-verbal communication. In verbal communication, the speaker transmits the messages to his interlocutor verbally. This type of communication is further divided into two, namely oral and written communication. In oral communication, a spoken language is used. Meanwhile, symbol or written signs are used in written communication. In the second type of communication, which is non-verbal communication, sign language and body language, such as gesture and facial expression, are employed by its speaker to communicate. In this modern era where technology has evolved in almost every aspect of people‘s life, some inventions have helped people to ease their communication both in verbal and non-verbal communication. Any communication media such as electronic mail email, video call, and short messages service SMS are the examples of how technology has helped people in term of communication. However, those media are not the primary media to communicate. They are only devices which help people to ease their communication with others living rather far away from them. However, people will never be separated from the environment or the neighborhood they are living in because they are considered as social beings. Besides using media to communicate, they do interact with people around them, and in doing so, they conduct a face to face conversation. In conducting a conversation, at least two participants are involved. The first participant acts as the speaker, while the other as the hearer. The speaker is in charge of delivering messages in a conversation; meanwhile, the hearer is the one who receives the messages. To make the conversation work, the participants can take a turn to deliver their messages. The purpose or the topic of conversation will vary, depending on to whom and where the participants conduct the conversation. Various linguistic expressions are used when people conduct a communication, specifically in face to face conversation. When the speaker says I’m sorry for coming late, he performs apologetic expression. His utterance is aimed to make an apology because the speaker has made the hearer waiting. Meanwhile, when the speaker says Congratulation I heard that you have launched your own clothing products. I am so proud of you, he performs congratulating expression. He wants to congratulate the speaker for his success to launch his clothing products. Besides, refusals, agreements, and compliments are the other examples of expressions in a conversation. In performing linguistic expression, the speaker will be influenced by the context. Context is the physical environment in which a word is used Yule, 1996: 21. By comprehending the context, it is expected that the speaker can perform linguistic expression appropriately. In funeral, for example, it is not appropriate to congratulate someone for his loss of his beloved family. What the speaker must do is delivering his sorrowful expression since the context in this example is in a sorrowful situation. In addition, it is also not appropriate if the speaker congratulate the hearer in apologetic expression as in ―I regret that you win this competition ‖. Saying congratulating expression such as in “I’m very happy you could win this competition. Congratulation” is more appropriate in this context. In linguistics, some approaches such as sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and pragmatics can be employed to analyze a conversation, especially the language used by the speakers. In sociolinguistics, social factors are the prominent elements in analyzing the language used by the participants in a conversation. Meanwhile, in psycholinguistics, physiological factors take an important role when analyzing language. However, among the approaches, pragmatics is the most appropriate approach to analyze expressions in a conversation due to its focus on language in context. Hence, analyzing language under the umbrella of pragmatics will be comprehensive in this research since this discipline studies words meaning and its context. Analyzing the literal meaning of the words can be explained by the knowledge about social and physical factors as well as where, when, and whom the participants are talking to. Therefore, when studying language through pragmatics, it is necessary to involve the interpretation of what people uttered in a particular context and the interpretation of how the context affects the speaker‘s utterances. In pragmatics, people can perform an action through utterances. This is called speech acts. Yule 1996:47 states that in attempting to express themselves, people do not only produce utterances containing grammatical structures and words, they perform actions via those utterances. Some linguists have distinguished speech acts into several types, one of which is commissive speech acts. Refusals, promises, and agreements are the examples of the expressions which are classified under commissive speech acts. Refusals are very interesting to be studied because they happen in daily life. Wierzbicka in Phuong 2006: 16 states that refusals mean the speech acts of saying no , expressing the addressee‘s non-acceptance, and declining of or disagreeing with a request, an invitation, a suggestion or an offer. People will not accept other‘s suggestion, request, offer, or invitation all the time; however, they sometimes need to refuse them. They express their refusals by employing refusing expressions. In refusing, the refuser can simply say No in order to refuse something. According to Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss Welz 1990: 72-73 this style of refusals is called direct type of refusals. In addition, the refuser can also use indirect type to refuse the refusee. As the example, when the refuser says My mom is sick, he refuses the refusee by making a reason. The refuser can also prcede is refusals with an adjunct as in Thak you, but I have a plan for tonight. According to Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss Welz 1990: 72-73 this type of refusals is called adjunct of refusals. Refusals can be seen not only in the real life, but also in a movie. Bordwell and Thompson 2008: 2 state that movies communicate information and ideas; movies show the audiences places and ways of life they might not otherwise know. In other words, movies are the depiction or real life since they bring a new experience to the audiences by giving stories which engage their emotions and minds. Even though movies are the result of human creativity, they are means to portray the social realities which occur in daily life. Even, some movies are adapted from true stories. One of those movies is 12 Years of a Slave. The choice of this movie is based on some considerations. First, the researcher is interested in analyzing the refusals performed by the characters whose social statuses are different from one another. The difference in social status between the masters and the slaves as well as the conflict among the slaves can cause some problems. The problems sometimes force the characters to perform refusals. For instance, there is a scene where Solomon refuses Patsey‘s request to kill her. The various contexts, however, will affect the characters in performing different refusals. Second, 12 Years a Slave is adapted from slave narrative memoir Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup. This memoir depicts the true story of Solomon Northup who is kidnapped and sold to be a slave. Third, this movie is considered as one of the best movies in 2013. It has received so many awards and nominated in several movie awards. In the 56 th Academy Award, 12 Years a Slave earns 3 awards including the best picture and nominates in 9 nominations. Furthermore, it also has won in other awards such as British Academy Film Awards for Best Film, Golden Globe Awards for Best Motion Picture, African-American Film Critics Association for Best film of the Years and in American Film Institute for Top 10 Movies of the Year.

B. Research Focus