Avoiding the Topic of Conversation

h. Criticizing t

he First Speaker’s Statement The characters sometimes express their disagreements because they want to criticize what the first speaker said which is contrary with their opinions. This expression is often expressed by giving explanations of why they disagree with the initial statement. Datum 25 below shows the occurrence of this reason. Frannie : “This is not a pipe”. But it is a pipe. Hazel : But it’s not. It is a drawing of a pipe. See? A drawing of a thing is not the thing itself. Nor is a T-shirt of a drawing of a thing, the thing itself. Datum 25 The dialogue happens when Frannie and Hazel are in their room in Oranje Hotel, Amsterdam. When Hazel is in the midst of preparing herself to meet Peter Van Houten in his house, Frannie notices that Hazel is wearing a cute T-shirt with a drawing of a pipe with a quote ‘This is not a pipe’ below the picture. It is a T-shirt that Anna, the main character in An Imperial Affliction , likes to wear as well. Frannie reads the quotation loudly and says her different opinion about it. She thinks that the picture is a pipe. Then, Hazel utters her disagreement by giving a rather long explanation of her opinion about the drawing of the thing which is not the thing itself. She criticizes what her mother has said by explaining her point of view in order to make her mother understand that what she has said is wrong. It can be concluded that Hazel’s reason in expressing her disagreement is to criticize the first speaker’s statement. As a conclusion of the findings, the characters in the Fault in Our Stars movie tend to employ mitigated disagreement acts when they utter their different opinions to other because the mitigated one is mostly used by them to save the other faces. It happens as they are aware of the effect of face threatening acts in disagreement acts that might interrupt their social relationship. As a result, the characters try to be polite by performing some mitigation devices in their expressions. Objective explanation is the main type of mitigation device that the characters use to deliver their disagreements. Meanwhile, the characters in this movie perform unmitigated disagreement acts mostly to threat other face. This strategy is mostly used by the characters when they disagree with someone whom they dislike. A short direct of opposite orientation is the main realization of unmitigated disagreement acts. Regarding to the reason, the characters in the Fault in Our Stars movie produce disagreement acts mostly be cause they are refusing the first speaker’s judgment. It is their needs to deliver their disagreements of other speaker’s judgment which seems contradictory with their own opinions or realities.