36 frequent strategy of negative politeness strategies which is often used by the
characters in the movie. The second previous study is an article in Sino-US English Teaching
journal, conducted by Zhao Peng-Liang and Gao Min entitled “Politeness
Strategies in Refusal.” The aim of this article is to discuss some politeness strategies in refusal based on Brown and Levinson’s theoretical framework.
However, this paper does not discuss all types of politeness strategy propose by Brown and Levinson, it only focuses on the positive politeness strategy and off
record strategy. This research discovers that face saving strategies are commonly delivered through positive politeness strategy rather than bald off record strategy.
Related to the two previous studies above, there are several differences between the two previous studies and the study conducted by the researcher.
While the previous studies only focus on positive and off record politeness strategies, this research is aimed to discover the kinds of positive and negative
politeness strategies. This research is also aimed to discover the factors influence the decision of the characters to choose certain types of politeness strategies.
Thus, it can be concluded that this research is different with the two previous studies.
B. Conceptual Framework
The researcher conducts the research under the issue of pragmatics since the researcher analyzes the language in use. This research is aimed to identify and
describe the kinds of positive and negative politeness strategies of refusals in
37 Boyhood and also the factors that influence the characters in choosing a certain
strategy. In obtaining the data, the researcher applies the classification of refusal
proposed by Bebe, Takahashi, and Uliss-Welt. Based on Bebe, Takahashi, and Uliss-Welt in Bebe and Takahashi 1987 there are three categories of refusals:
direct refusal, indirect refusal, and adjuncts to refusal. Further, the researcher classifies the data based on the theory of politeness
strategy proposed by Brown and Levinson. Brown and Levinson in Goody, 1978 has classified some sub strategies to positive and negative politeness. Positive
politeness has 15 strategies: noticing and attending to hearer, exaggerating, intensifying interest to hearer, using in-group identity markers, seeking
agreement, avoiding disagreement, presupposingraisingasserting common ground, joking, asserting or presupposing knowledge of and concern for hearer’s
wants, offering and promising, being optimistic, including both speaker and hearer in the activity, giving or asking for reasons, assuming or asserting
reciprocity, and giving gifts to hearer. On the other hand, negative politeness has 10 strategies: being
conventionally indirect, questioning and hedging, being pessimistic, minimizing the imposition, giving deference, apologizing, impersonalizing speaker and
hearer, stating the face threatening act as a general rule, nominalizing, and going on record as incurring a debt or as not indebting the hearer.
In analyzing the second problem, which is related to the factors that influence the characters in choosing a certain strategy, the researcher applies
38 Brown and Levinson’s theory of factors influencing the choice of strategies.
Based on Brown and Levinson in Goody, 1978: 71 the choice of a certain politeness strategy is influenced by payoffs and relevant circumstances social
distance, relative power, and rank of imposition. Based on the conceptual framework, an analytical construct diagram is
drawn to outline the theories used in this research. The analytical construct is presented the following page.
