Negative Politeness Strategies Used By Sybil Branson In Downtown Abbey,s Television Series Script
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ISSN: 2302-920X
E-Jurnal Humanis, Fakultas Sastra dan Budaya Unud
Vol 15.2 Mei 2016: 81-90
Negative Politeness Strategies Used By Sybil Branson In Downtown Abbey,s Television Series Script
Ida Ayu Apsari Dewi email: apsaridewi625@yahoo.co.id English Department, Faculty of Letters and Culture, Udayana University
Abstrak
Studi ini berjudul “Negative Politeess Strategies Used by Sybil Branson in Downtown Abbey’s Television Series Script”. Studi ini difokuskan dan bertujuan untuk mengidentifikasi dan menganalisa jenis dari strategi kesopanan negative dan factor yang mempengaruhi pemakaian strategi tersebut oleh salah satu tokoh dari cerita fiktif tersebut bernama Sybil Branson.
Data yang digunakan dalam studi ini diambil dari dialog yang terdapat dalam naskah serial televisi Downtown Abbey, terutama dialog antara Sybil Branson dengan keluarga, teman-teman dan pelayannya. Kalimat-kalimat yang digunakan sebagai sumber data studi ini adalah kalimat yang terdapat dalam percakapan yang menggunakan strategi kesopanan negative.
Metode yang digunakan adalah metode kualitatif dan deskripsi. Teori yang digunakan dalam studi ini berdasarkan teori Brown dan Levinson (1978) untuk mengidentifikasi dan menganalisa jenis dari strategi kesopanan negative dan factor yang mempengaruhi pemakaian strategi tersebut.
Hasil studi ini menyebutkan bahwa terdapat 10 jenis strategi kesopanan negative yang ditemukan dan 2 faktor yang mempengaruhi pemakaian strategi tersebut. Jenis dari strategi kesopanan negative dan faktor yang mempengaruhi pemakaiannya memiliki hubungan yang erat dalam percakapan sehari-hari. Baik digunakan untuk bercakap-cakap dengan perbedaan jenis kelamin, pria atau wanita, perbedaan umur, tua atau muda ataupun disesuaikan dengan keadaan, situasi dan kondisi.
Kata kunci : strategi kesopanan negative, Downtown Abbey, Sybil Branson, television series.
Politeness is an important subject matter in a communication. Politeness is behaving in a way that attempts to take into account the feelings of the people being addressed. In this case, the speakers try to avoid another person, or making him or her feel uncomfortable. Being polite is trying to determine what appropriate things to say to someone else are and what are not to. Thus, politeness refers to the situation where we respect the others to whom we speak. It is truly significant in our daily communication in order to make good relationship with our society.
According to Brown and Levinson (1993:1) politeness strategies are developed in order to save hearer’s “face“. Face refers to a speaker’s sense of linguistic and social identity, which is defined as “the public self-image that every member of the society wants to claim for himself“. Politeness strategies are developed for the main purpose of dealing with these face threatening acts (FTA’s). There are four types of politeness strategies, describe by Brown and Levinson that sum up human “politeness” behavior. The strategies are bald on record, positive politeness, negative politeness, and off record-indirect strategies. It is chosen to analyze considering that when the speaker doing the FTA’s, it will reflect to the speaker’s feeling and influencing the speaker’s respond.
Negative politeness strategies are oriented towards the hearer’s negative face and emphasize avoidance of imposition on the hearer. Negative face is the desire to remain autonomous so the speaker is more capable to include an out for the listener, through distancing styles like apologies.
Based on the background previously, the main problems that must be analyzed in this research can be seen as follows:
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a. What are the negative politeness strategies used by Sybil Branson in her directive utterances in Downtown Abbey television series?
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b. What are the factors that influence the choice of negative politeness strategies which is used by Sybil Branson in her directive utterances?
Referring on the problems above, the aims of this study are:
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a. To describe what negative politeness strategies are used by Sybil Branson in her directive utterances in Downtown Abbey television series
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b. To analyze the factors that influence the choice of negative politeness strategies which is used by Sybil Branson in her directive utterances
The primary data in this undergraduate paper was a British television series entitled “Downtown Abbey”. the all data were taken from the sentences of the dialogue of Downtown Abbey’ s television series script, which are the dialogue of Sybil Branson with the other characters. The method and technique used in collecting data is descriptive method and note taking technique. The data in this study were analyzed qualitatively based on the theory of politeness by Brown and Levinson(1978).
This part deals with the result and the discussion of the data. The data analysis were divided into two parts: analysis of negative politeness strategies and the factors that influence the choice of the negative politeness strategies.
Strategy 1 – Be conventionally indirect is applied in sentence “Then I’ll stay with you in case any explanation are needed”. In this sentence there are two tensions that a speaker faced in this strategy are the desire of H by being indirect and the desire to go on record. Sybil Branson as S wants to communicate her desire to be indirect even though in fact the utterance goes on record.
From the sentence “I’m going down. Coming?”, this utterance from Sybil Branson in which her tones when she ask one of her sister, Mary. This strategy used when we wants to ask someone not in a proper way to be uttered. As we know Mary is the sister of Sybil who is older than her, Sybil should use more polite language to respect her sister. Sybil relationship with her sibling is very close so it makes her thinks there is no boundaries between her and sister.
Strategy 3 – Be pessimistic is applied by Sybil Branson when her sister, Edith, ask Sybil and Mary what are they doing in the attics. Based on the sentence “I expect Mary was just showing the Duke our house,
weren’t you?” this sentence was uttered and gave redress to the H’s negative face by expressing doubt feeling of Sybil for her sister Mary. Sybil expects and would like to make sure that her sister, Mary just showing the Duke their house, no more than that.
Negative politeness strategy 4 – Minimize the imposition, Rx is applied in sentence “Golly, my corset’s tight. Anna, when you’ve done that, would you be an angel and loosen it a bit?”. It is used when FTA needs to be defuse by minimize the imposition of Rx. By doing this strategy, indirectly it will pays H deference.
Strategy 5 – give deference is applied by Sybil Branson when she tried to convince one of her servant, Gwen to apply for a new job as a secretary in new firm at Thirsk and to put Sybil’s name as Gwen’s reference to get that job. Based on sentence“Why should I? I think it’s terrific that people make their own lives, especially women. Write to them today and name me s your reference. I can give it without ever specifying precisely what your work here as been” this sentence was uttered direct expressing that Sybil Branson want to be treated as supervisor by giving the deference.
In sentence “Papa. I’m sorry I disobeyed you, but I’m interested.
I’m political, I have opinions” is applied strategy 6.- Apologize. This strategy is used when S can indicate his reluctance to impinge on H’s negative face and hereby partially redress that impingement by
apologizing. Sentence (6) is type of admit the impingement where Sybil Branson as speaker can simply admit that she is impinging on H’s face and she disappoints that her father do not understand what she wants and her passion to politic.
Negative politeness strategy 7 – Impersonalize S and H is applied in sentence “You shouldn’t laugh, that’s so unkind”. In this sentence indicates that S does not want to impinge on H is to phrase the FTA as if the agent were other than S. from the sentence, the type is imperative, Sybil indicates her sisters Mary and Edith not to laugh.
From dialogue above the use of negative politeness strategy 8 – State FTA as general rule is applied on the sentences “There’s nothing wrong with doctors. We all need doctors”. In a way of dissociating S and H from the particular imposition in the FTA, and hence a way communicating that S does not want to impinge but is merely forced to by circumstances is to state the FTA as an instance of some social rule, regulation, or obligation. Here, Sybil uttered that we all people need doctors, no matter what the social rank is. Whenever we get sick or whatever the sickness is, we will seek for doctors because we need them.
According to sentence “It seems rather unlikely, a revolutionary chauffer” where Sybil Branson as the speaker, she addresses Branson as a revolutionary chauffer which is mean . she can used word but she rather use chauffer than a . this strategy used to nominalized the subject in order to make sentence more formal.
In sentence “I don’t know why we bother with corsets. Men don’t wear them and they look perfectly normal in their clothes” Sybil Branson as speaker applied negative politeness strategy 10 - Go on record as incurring a debt, or as not indebting H. This strategy reveals that by referring explicitly to the difficulty of H’s complying, S implicitly puts a debt to H for causing difficulty for S. From this sentence, Sybil puts herself in debt to her sisters, especially Mary and women for the reason why they need to put corset on unlike the men.
According to Brown and Levinson (1978) there are two factors that can influence the choice of strategies, there are the intrinsic payoffs and the relevant circumstances.
By doing negative politeness, a speaker can benefit in the following ways: he can pay respect and deference to the addressee in return for
the FTA and can avoid incurring a future debt; he can maintain social distance and avoid the threat of advancing familiarity towards the addressee, for example: (Be indirect) “I want a glass of lychee martini” in this situation he or she hoping that he or she hoping that question should not be ask directly and the server do not have to come and ask for the order.
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a) The “social distance” (D) of S and H. D is a symmetric social dimension of similarity/difference within which S and H stand for the purpose of this act. In many cases, it is based on assessment of the frequency of interaction and the kinds of material on nonmaterial goods exchanged between S and H parties representing S or H or for whom S and H are representative.
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b) The “relative power” (P) of S and H. P is an asymmetric social dimension of relative power. That is, P (H,S) is the degree to which H can impose his own plans and his own self-evaluation as the expense of S plans and self-evaluation.
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c) The “absolute ranking” (R) of imposition in particular culture. R is culturally and conditionally defined ranking of imposition by the degree to which they are considered to interfere with what agent’s wants of self-determination or of approval. Moreover, Brown and Levinson (1996) developed a theory on relationship between the intensity of threat to face and linguistically realized politeness. the intensity of threat to face is expressed by a weight
(W) that is linked to the FTA (Renkema, 1993:14). They also give formula for weightness of FTA. Intensity of threat to face:
W (FTA) = R + D P
W = The weight of the FTA
R = Rate of imposition
D (S, H) = Social distance between S and H
P (H, S) = Power distance as H has over S
Here are the examples:
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(1) Pardon me, would it be all right if I go?
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(2) Mind if I go?
The utterance (1) is usually said by a staff to his boss or supervisor, while in the same situation, the utterance (2) is might be used by the boss or supervisor to the staff. Both utterances show the intensity of the threat to face based on the social circumstances given by the explanation by Brown and Levinson (1996:82)
It can be concluded that the negative politeness strategies and the factors that influence the choice of strategies have a correlation whether when we speak to female or male person or have a close relation or not they always try to be polite in all situations. It can be occurred in all kinds of social distances, for example based on this study, it found in some of the dialogues, between Sybil with her family, parents and sisters, her maids, and Tom Branson. The negative politeness strategies depend on the situations and the needs of communication. When the negative politeness strategies needs to be applied, the strategies should be chosen carefully.
In Downtown Abbey’s television series script, the negative politeness strategies mainly applied by Sybil Branson, it also has correlation with the factors that influence the choice of strategies. Negative politeness strategies involves not impeding someone’s wish to get on with achieving the goals.
Brown, Penelope; and Levinson, Stephen. 1987. Politeness: some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Scollon, R. (with Scollon, S. W.). (1995). Intercultural communication: A Discourse Approach. Oxford, England: Blackwell.
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