An analysis of positive politeness strategies in the film entitled Carnage

Aloisia Lidia Bosu

2014002052

A. Introduction

Background of the problem

In doing communcation, people use language to say or deliver their ideas and
opinions, and provide information to others. There were many ways of communication.
Sometimes the conversation cannot be successful because of misunderstanding between
speaker and receiver during the conversation. It was important to consider someone’s attitude
when they were doing or saying something. If the speaker decided to say something. It means
that she/he has already thought about the way and choice of words which is use during the
conversation. In this case, posititive politeness plays important role in human life. According
to Wang (2010:121), speakers have to be able to choose various communicative strategies to
maintain a good relationship between both interlocutors and they also need to apply strategies
to construct a good conversation.
Positive politeness is our way to speak in order to show our regard to other
people. Positive politeness is used by people to show their relationship among them using
common ground and solidarity expression to show politeness. In addition to hedging and
attempts to avoid conflict, some strategies of positive politeness include statements of
friendship, solidarity, compliments.

Why positive politeness is very important in our life ? because if we apply it in our
life we can make the other person feel good in a our conversation. It teach us to respect
other’s opinion and their status in individual. People express their respect and solidarity to
others as well as avoid embrrasing them or make them fell uncomfortable by using positive
politeness. Positive politenes was not only used in daily conversation but also found in a
film.
Film is medium of communication rich with social implications, created within
different social, historical and cultural context. Film show the social interaction of people real
lives. From a film, we can learn another subject when we watched it. We can learn about
educational, kinship, tolerance between each other, moral or others value that implied there,
or about acting of the actors and actress includes of the social relations or the language and
the dialogue or utterance they use.

Carnage is one of the interesting film to be analyzed in terms of positive politeness

strategies. The researcher chooses this film because it has won five awards and nominated in
some film festivals. Furthermore, this film tells about four people who learn about the
importance meaning of politeness that is related to the topic of this study. The data are in the
form of utterances which contain positive politeness strategies applied by the characters in
the movie.

B. Theoretical Review

1. Language

Language is a means of communication. It distinguishes human being and

animals. According to the philosophy expressed in myht and religion of many people,
language is a source of human life and power (Fromkin, Rodman, and Hyam, 2003:3).
Language is very important for daily conversation.

Brown (1994:4) says that language is system of arbitary, vocal symbols which
permit all people in a given culture, or other people who have learned the system ofe
the culture, to communicate or interact. It can be conclude that language is a media to
communicate in a society. without language, people will find difficulties to fulfil their
needs of life. Language can also used to get information about what people want.
Making communication by using a language may make them learn the habit, culture,
and background each of them.

2. Positive Politeness Strategies

According to Brown and Levinson (1987:70) positive politeness is oriented

toward the positive face of the hearer, the positive self-image that he claims for himself
and his perenial desire that his wants (or the action/acquisition/values/resultingfrom
them) should be thought of as desirable. Positive Politeness Strategies shows that the
hearer has a desire to be respected. It also confirms that the relationship is friendly and
expresses group reciprocity. Positive Politeness Strategies is seek to minimize the threat
to the hearer's positive face. These strategies are used to make the hearer feel good
 about themselves, their interests or possessions, and are most usually used in situations
where the audience knows each other fairly well. In addition to hedging and attempts to
avoid conflict, some strategies of positive politeness include statements of friendship,
solidarity, compliments, etc.

C. Kinds of positive politeness strategies

Brown and Levinson in Watts (2003:89-90) give fifteen strategies of positive

politeness. These strategies try to minimize the threat to the hearer‘s face. They most
commonly used in situations where the audience knows each other fairly well to avoid
conflict. Those fifteen strategies are discussed further in the section below:

Strategy 1: Notice, attend to H (his interests, wants, needs, goods)

This strategies is done by taking notice of heare’s condition. The hearer’s condition itself
can be heare’s interests, noticeable changes, or possesions.

Strategy 2: Exaggerate (interest, approval, sympathy with H)

This is often done with exaggerated intonation, stress, and other aspects of prosodic, as
well as with intensifying modifiers.

Strategy 3: Intensify interest to Hearer

In this strategies, there is another way for the speaker to communicate to the hearer that he
shares some of his wants to intensify the interest of his own (the speaker) contribution to
the conversation, by making a good story.
 Strategy 4: Seek Agreement
This strategies ususaly involves two ways, repetition and safe topic.

 Safe topics. The raising of ‘safe topics’ allows speaker to stress his agreement with
hearer and therefore to satisfy hearer’s desire to be ‘right’, or to be corroborated in his
opinions.
 Repetition. Agreement may also be stressed by repeating part or all of what the
preceding speaker has said in the conversation and by using that function to indicate
emphatic agreement (‘yes’, ‘Really’, etc) whenever someone is telling story.e. g:
“There was flood in my hometown.” “Oh my God. Flood!”

Strategy 5: Avoid disagreement

 Token agreement. S may go in twisting their utterances so as to appear to agree or to

hide disagreement-to respond to a preceding utterance with ‘yes, but…..'in effect,
rather than a blatant ‘No’.e. g. H: “How the girl looked like, beautiful?”
S: “Yes, I think she is quite, but not really beautiful, she is certainly not really ugly.”

 Pseudo-agreement. Another example of apparent or pseudo-agreement is found in

English in the use of then as a conclusory marker.e.g. I’ll meet you in front of the
theatre just before 8.0, then.

 White lies. S may do white lie to hide disagreement. By doing this, S is saving H’s
face.e. g. In response to a request to borrow a car, “Oh I can’t, my father will use it
tonight.”

 Hedging opinions. To soften FTA of suggesting, criticizing or complaining, hedges

may also be used.e. g.: “I know you are sort of a polite person”

Strategy 6: Offer or promises

In this strategy, the speaker claim whatever the hearer wants, the speaker will help to
obtain the herare’s wants. Often and promises are natural outcomes of choosing this
strategy.

Strategy 7: Be optimistic
In this strategies, the speaker assumes that the hearer wants to do something for the
speaker (or for the speaker and the hearer) and will help to obtain them. This usually
happens among people with close relationship.

Strategy 8: Give (or ask for) reasons

In this strategy, the speaker including the hearer in the speaker’s practical reasoning and
assuming reflexivity that the hearer wants to the speaker’s wants.

Strategy 9: Give gifts to H (goods, sympathy, understanding, cooperation)

In this strategy, the speaker may satisfies the hearer’s positive face want by giving gift,
not only tangible gifts, but human relation wants which are the wants to be liked, admired,
cared about, understood, listened to, etc

Strategy 10 :Presuppose / rise / assert common ground

This strategy includes three ways among them are gossip or small talk, point of view
operations and presupposition manipulation.
1. Gossip or small talk, the value of speaker’s spending time and effort on being with the
hearer, as a mark of friendship or interest him.
2. Point of view operations by means of deixis. It is used for reducing the distance
between the speaker and the hearer’s point of view.
3. Presupposition manipulation means that the speaker presupposes something that it is
mutually taken for granted.

Strategy 11: Jokes

Jokes can be used to stress the fact that there must be some mutual background
knowledge and values that speaker and hearer share. That is why, the strategy of joking
may be useful in diminishing the social distance between the speaker and hearer.

Strategy 12: Assert or Presuppose S’s knowledge of and concerns for H’s wants.
It is the way to indicate that speaker and hearer are co-operators, and thus potentially to
put pressure on hearer to cooperate with speaker. The speaker wants to assert and imply
knowledge of hearer’s wants and willingness to fit one’s own wants with them.
Strategy 13: Include both S and H in the activity
The speaker manipulates the subject of an activity is done together. The speaker uses an
inclusive ‘we’ from when the speaker actually means ‘you’ or ‘me’. Inclusive form ‘we’
is usually used in the construction.

Strategy 14: Assume or assert reciprocity

The speaker asks the hearer to cooperate with him by giving evidence of reciprocal rights
or obligations between speaker and hearer.

Strategy 15: Use in-group identity markers

A strategy by using any of the innumerable ways to convey in-group membership, the
speaker can implicitly claim the common ground with the hearer that is carried by that
definition of the group. This strategy includes in-group usages of address forms, use of
in-group language or dialect, and use of jargon or slang.
Conclusion

Based on analysis above, the writer has found eight strategies of positive politenes in carnage
movie. Those strategies are Notice/attend to hearer‘s wants (his interests, wants, needs,
goods), Exaggerate (interest, approval, sympathy with the hearer), intensify interest to hearer,
giving gifts to H (goods, sympathy, understanding, cooperation), promise, giving or asking
for reasons, include both speaker and hearer in the activity, joking to put the hearer at ease.

References
Brown, Penelope and Stephen, C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language
Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brown, H. D.1994. Principle of language learning and teaching. Englewood Clifs, N. J.:
Prentice Hall Regents
Fromkin, V., R, Rodman and N Hyams. 2003. An introduction to seventh edition. Boston,
mass: Thomson and Heinle.
Wang, Yuling. 2010. “Analyzing Hedges in Verbal Communication: An Adaptation-Based
Approach”. Henan: Henan University of Technology.