A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE POLITENESS STRATEGIES OF REFUSALS IN RICHARD LINKLATER’S BOYHOOD

Abstract

This research aims to identify and describe the kinds of positive and negative politeness strategies of refusals
employed in Boyhood and the factor of choosing a certain type of politeness strategy in Boyhood. This research
employed the descriptive qualitative method. The data were in the form of utterances which contain refusals.
The data source was Boyhood movie. There were two instruments of this research: the researcher and the data
sheet. The data were collected by doing several steps: watching the movie, checking the accuracy of the
dialogue in the movie and the transcript, writing down the refusals delivered by the characters, and recording the
data into the data sheet. To ensure the data trustworthiness, a triangulation technique was applied. There are two
results of this study. The first result is that both of positive and negative politeness strategies are employed by
the characters. There are eight sub-strategies of positive politeness that are being applied by the characters:
intensifying interest to the hearer, using in-group identity markers, avoiding disagreement, joking, being
optimistic that the hearer wants what the speaker wants, including both speaker and hearer in the activity, giving
or asking for reasons, and giving gifts to hearer. Negative politeness strategy is realized by questioning and
hedging, minimizing the imposition, apologizing, and stating the face threatening act as a general rule. The
second result is that all characters in Boyhood consider payoff to be one of the basic factors influencing their
choice of performing a certain strategy. The second factor is relevant circumstances which consist of three
elements: social distance, relative power, and rank of imposition. This research reveals that positive politeness
strategy is employed when the social distance between the speaker and the hearer is close, the relative power
between the participants is insignificant, and the rank of imposition is relative small. On the other hand,
negative politeness strategy is applied when the rank of imposition is high and the participants have a big
difference in terms of social distance and relative power.

Key words: pragmatic, positive politeness strategy, negative politeness strategy, refusal, Boyhood