THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK LITERATURE REVIEW
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a theoretical, speculative and idealistic way of approaching imminent problems and handling everyday affairs.
Practically, considering the participants in the interaction and what is actually happen in our everyday life, it is important to take a close attention to who interacts
with whom and that those people share or do not share the same background of knowledge. Pragmatics helps us to see that knowledge owned by the participants
may affect to the understanding on how the same words are possibly interpreted differently by different respondents. Thus, the pragmatic competence of the
participants cannot be left behind. This thesis is a pragmatic study in which the researcher focuses on the use
of the language by non-English learners, challenges that most of pragmatic studies take English learners as their research objects. It is worth discussing since non-
English learners basically do not experience the same teaching and learning process and the English ones. As Ochs in Aijemer and Ruhlemann 2015:2 highlights that
“the language user chooses a linguistic form variably according to the social situation, which is broadly conceived and includes such factors as speaker identity,
relations to the hearer, activity type and the speaker stance”, by taking students from different background of fields study, the researcher investigates whether the
distinction may occur or not. The appropriateness of participants in interaction refers to the notion of
communicative competence. Allot 2010:33 defi nes “communicative competence
as the ability to communicate in a language. This competence includes competence of grammatical forms of language and the ability to put forms of language use in
communication”. Therefore, the communicative competence also comprises the PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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pragmatic competence of the users of English language, in this research is Medical and Law students, in different situational contexts. He further asserts that the
competence is not merely considering the grammar and speech sound, but also covers the strategies for communicating in that language. In pragmatics, the
competence also closely related to the interlanguage pragmatics term. According to Mey 2009:
1008, “interlanguage is a stage on a continuum within a rule-governed language system that is developed by L2 learners on the way to occurring the target
language”. Recalling back that pragmatics is a study of language in use, it is often that people apply speech acts whenever they communicate. Moreover, when they
come from different background or area of study fields, it is potential that they use language differently to share their wants and intentions. As Ariel 2010:39 states
that people use linguistic forms to perform act. Since uttering something is not merely delivering information, yet focusing on acting through language, the most
common speech acts embedded in daily interaction is requesting. Drew and Couper- Kuhlen 2014:1 stress:
Requesting is one of the most basic and ubiquitous activities in social interaction. Whoever we are and whenever we live, whatever the
language we speak, whatever work we do, whatever our status or ‘position’ in society, whatever domestic arrangements we have and
generally whatever our circumstances, almost every day in our lives we ask someone to do something for us
– we make a request. Through the pragmatic examination, we may notice that when we ask
someone to do something, we put them on sort kind of obligation to be further accept and do whatever we request them for. Therefore, we need to select strategies
when we make request to moderate our acts. Rue and Zhang 2008 suggest four modifications as the request strategies namely the openers, head acts, internal
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modifications for the lexical or syntactical modifications and external modifications as supportive moves. These strategies are utilized to investigate the use of the
request acts by non-English students of Batam University, specifically for Medicine and Law students. On the other hand, requests also always deal with politeness as
the measurements of appropriateness of the acts used in making requests. As the instrument, the researcher employs DCT which has been widely known as the most
commonly used instruments for the data elicitation method in pragmatics Felix- Brasdefer, 2008:59. At this point, the responses of the DCTs are the data which
cover words, phrases, clauses, and sentences contain request acts. Based on these responses, the researcher finds they satisfy the openers, head acts, internal and
external modifications as the students’ strategies in making requests.
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Figure 2. The Researcher’s Theoretical Framework
Pragmatic Study Pragmatic
Competence Strategies and
Modification of requests
Factors underlie the choice of the
strategies and modifications
Interlanguage Pragmatics
Speech Acts Openers
Head Acts
Internal modifications lexical and syntactical
modifications Discourse
Completion Tasks
DCTs
External modifications supportive moves
Politeness Requests
English for Medicine Law
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