Politeness Definition of Terms
12 to the language that is used whether or not the language is in line with the social
context. Besides, sociolinguistics is also related to the social behavior because when people do the communication, they also perform certain acts which may
represent what they really think about. Speech acts is also related to pragmatics study because speech acts is
under the scope of pragmatics study. Katz 1977 as cited in Levinson 1983 has a simpler definition about pragmatics.
Grammars are theories about the structure of sentence types while pragmatics theories, in contrast, do nothing explicate the structure of
linguistics constructions or grammatical properties and relations. They explicate the reasoning of speakers and hearers in working out the
correlations in a context of a sentence token with a proposition. In this respect, a pragmatic theory is part of performance. p. 8
As mentioned in the theory above, it can be said that pragmatics is neither related
with the structure of grammatical theories or the structure of linguistics. It is the reason of the speaker and the hearer work out to make the language appropriate
with the context of the communication. Levinson 1983 adds that “the term
pragmatics covers both context-dependent aspects of language structure and principles of language usage and understanding that have nothing or little to do
wit h linguistics structure” p. 9. In communication, people will not care about
how they produce certain sounds of a language. They concern more about the way they choose and apply the language for the communication. Therefore, the proper
language can be applied as well as the social context. Since the term pragmatics does not deal with linguistic structure, the study of speech acts is included in
pragmatics study because it deals with language use and the understanding of the PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
13 language. Moreover, language politeness also deals with language choosing as
well as the social context and the behaviors performed by the language users in understanding the message of the communication.
According to Searle 1974, speech act is the production of utterances which is done under the conditions. People may produce certain utterances based
on the condition that is faced during the communication. Searle 1974 adds that “speaking a language is firstly, performing speech acts, such as making
statements, giving commands, asking questions, making promises, and so on; and, secondly, that these acts are in general made possible by and are performed in
accordance with certain rules for the use of linguistics elements” p.16. In other words, someone who makes statements, gives commands, or makes promises is
considered as a speaker who performs the speech acts. Levinson 1983 states in order to deliver the meaning of what people want, all utterances which are
produced perform specific actions of doing things. In other words, when a speaker produces utterances, it may contain specific actions that represent the speak
er‟s wants or meaning. According to Austin 1962, there are three basic senses in
which saying something one is doing something, and hence three kinds of acts that are simultaneously performed as cited in Levinson, 1983. The classification
of three basic senses as stated by Austin 1962 is explained in the following sections.