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Ewell. The Finch family faced harsh criticism in the heavily racist Maycomb because of Atticuss decision to defend Tom. Atticus believed that Tom was
innocent and he wanted to reveal the truth to his fellow towns‟ people and
encourage them to imagine the possibility of racial equality. Unfortunately, although the evidences support that Tom was innocent,
after hours of deliberation the jury pronounced him guilty. Tom tried to escape from his prison and was shot to death in the process. Bob Ewell felt humiliated by
the trial and tried to revenge. He got his revenge one night while Jem and Scout were walking home from Halloween play at their school. In the darkness and
confusion, someone had come to their rescue. The mysterious man stabbed Mr. Ewell and saved the children; he carried Jem home when Scout realized that the
mysterious man was Boo Radley. Finally, Scout had a chance to meet the shy and nervous Boo. At the end of this fateful night, the sheriff declared that Mr. Ewell
fell on his own knife. Scout walked to Boo ‟s home and imagined how he had
viewed the town and observed her, Jem and Dill over the years from inside his home. Boo went inside, closed the door, and she never saw him again.
6. Previous Studies
There were several studies that discuss the same novel on the similar topic. The previous studies were hopefully helping the researcher to discover
deeper on the novel, especially about the topic being discussed. The studies are as follows:
1. The first study was done by Ani Septyaningsih 2007 entitled The Study of Positive Politeness in Good Company Movie. The objective of this research
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was to categorize the positive politeness done by the character in the movie. There were 15 strategies of positive politeness employed by the characters in
the dialogs of a film entitled “In Good Company”. Among them were notice,
attend to the hearer, exaggerate, intensify interest to the hearer, use in-group identify markers, seek agreement, avoid disagreement, presupposeraiseassert
common ground, a joke, assert or presuppose the speaker‟s knowledge and
concern for the hearer‟s wants, offerpromise, be optomistic, includes both the speaker and the hearer, give or ask for reasons, assume or assert reciprocity
and give gifts to the hearer. There were two factors influencing the characters when they employ this strategy, namely payoff and relevant circumstances.
2. The second study was conducted by Farida 2010 with her thesis entitled Prejudice in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. The objective of this
research was to found the prejudice done by people in Maycomb County and its type in Lee‟s To Kill a Mockingbird novel. The result of Farida‟s study
showed that there were some prejudices which were done by many Maycomb people against families with different or bad habit and against black people.
Those prejudices were caused by the differences in custom and race. Therefore, prejudice could cause discrimination, segregation, and oppression in society.
Then, another result was the reflection of prejudice in the novel toward prejudice in the real condition in Alabama.
Those two previous studies were different from this research. This research focused only on the politeness used by Atticus in the courtroom when
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he defended a black man in a criminal case. The researcher did not analyze prejudice or politeness other than in the courtroom done by Atticus.
B. Conceptual Framework
The study deals with the politeness strategy used by Atticus, the main character, in the courtroom. This study particularly is aimed at observing and
analyzing the use of politeness strategies which are produced by the main character in
Lee‟s To Kill A Mockingbird during the trial. To conduct the study, the writer uses politeness strategies model
proposed by Brown and Levinson and Watt in order to be able to answer the first research question stated in chapter one: what politeness strategies are used by the
main character in Lee‟s To Kill A Mockingbird ? To apply the theory, the writer
classified the utterances into four kinds of politeness strategies, namely Bald on Record, Positive Politeness, Negative Politeness, and Off Record. Next, to get
more detailed result, each categorization will be divided again into the points under each politeness strategy sub headings. To make the conceptual framework
clear, the researcher presents it in the diagram as follows:
