Politeness Strategies in 2014 Presidential Debates between Joko Widodo and Prabowo Subianto

Abstract

This study analyzed the politeness strategies employed by Joko Widodo and
Prabowo Subianto in 2014 Presidential Debates. This study used descriptive
qualitative method. Kothari (2004:2) states that Descriptive research includes
surveys and fact-finding enquiries of different kinds. In this study the writer
described the utterances of president candidates debate into written text. The
major purpose of descriptive research is description of the state of affairs as it
exists at present. The instrument of collecting data is video recording of Debat
Capres Cawapres Jokowi Jk- Prabowo Hatta at Metro TV on July 5, 2014.
Particular attention is given to candidate’s use of bald on record, positive
politeness, negative politeness, off record and do not do speech act or do the FTA
(face threatening act) as defined by Brown and Levinson theory. The focus of the
paper is on the types of politeness strategies that used in debate, the dominant type
of politeness strategies, and the reason of dominant type usage in debate. The
result showed that the most dominant type is Positive politeness (61,53%). Then
there was also Negative politeness (30,76%), On record (3,84%), Off record
(3,84%) and do not do the FTA (0%). The president candidates mostly used
positive politeness because want to reduce face-threatening act besides how the
two candidates can be conveyed smoothly without making one party feels
threatened.