IR-PERPUSTAKAAN UNIVERSITAS AIRLANGGA CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background of the Study Communication is part of human needs. People communicate to fulfill their needs as human beings. In communication or interaction, There are rules and norms which understood and followed by society. These rules and norms set by the society to define what is appropriate and what is not appropriate. These rules and norms indicate the proper ways of doing things, of dress, of speech, and also appearance. Just like language. In using language, there are rules and norms that set and followed by a society. People use language to interact with others, it means that in order to be able to build relationship between one person with another, language is needed as a part of the interaction. Not only that, language is also used by people to express themselves. People tend to use language as a part of expressing their emotion, for example, language that is used by people when they are happy and language that is used by people when they are sad or angry are often different. People choose their own ways to express their emotion depending on the situation. In addition, language is also used to convey meaning. People use language in different ways because they have their own intention. The concept of politeness and impoliteness can be found when discussing about language usage. The employment of of polite and impolite language is based on people’s intention in involving themselves in a communication. They can use polite language which is designed to keep or save the adressee’s face. In the other hand, 1 SKRIPSI LINGUISTIC IMPOLITENESS STRATEGIES... NABILA CHOIRUN NISA IR-PERPUSTAKAAN UNIVERSITAS AIRLANGGA When the adresser uses impolite language, that means they employ linguistic strategies to attack or to damage the adressee’s face. In linguistics, people are able to learn about polite and impolite language by studying pragmatics and its approaches. Within the field of pragmatics, a concept of politeness and impoliteness can be found. All the speech acts that imply to eliminate threats to someone’s face in a particular social context are considered as politeness. People have their own faces or public self-images. People often hope that their faces are respected and accepted by the society. In using language, people can be considered polite if they use appropriate words in their sentence. In the other way, people can be considered impolite if they use inappropriate words in their sentence. The word “polite” itself can be vary among different cultures (Mohammed dan Abbas 2015). For example, In Indonesia, it is considered polite to use formal language when we talk with someone who is older than us. Another example can be pointed out from Japanese culture, where it is considered polite when someone bows to respect others. If someone has reached closer relationship with another person, the politeness level becomes less important (Laitinen 2010). One behavior is more offensive, hurtful, and mean if it is done intentionally (Culpeper, Impoliteness : Using language to cause offence 2011). Although politeness might be different in each culture, the importance of being polite to create a good interaction and to maintain social harmony is the general or basic need which is suitable for every culture. For example, in all 2 SKRIPSI LINGUISTIC IMPOLITENESS STRATEGIES... NABILA CHOIRUN NISA IR-PERPUSTAKAAN UNIVERSITAS AIRLANGGA culture, it is considered polite to say words like “Thank you,” “Please,” and “Sorry” in order to maintain social harmony in society. Eventhough politeness is a crucial aspect of social interaction, damaging politeness, in other words being impolite, is bound to happen. Sometimes, people do not realize that they offend other people by saying words or doing something wrong. The other case is that, sometimes people use words that intend to offend others with certain motives. Culpeper describes that impoliteness uses communicative behavior which has its intention is to cause the target’s “Face loss” or what the target considers to be so. It disguises itself behind utterances such as verbal abuse, bullying, threats, and etc. This case is considered as a big deal today. There are many scientific researches found out that verbal behaviors or abuses are more harmful and damaging than physical violence. Discussing about politeness, it is also necessary to discuss about impoliteness. Impoliteness covers about some communicative behaviours that includes the attraction of negative evaluations in context and cause offense. Even in many cultures, impoliteness is socially, morally, and even legally outlawed, impoliteness is virtually universal in human interaction. In this case, human linguistic interaction, overspreading all kind of forms of either spoken or written communication, although in different forms and with different frameworks. Also, sometimes, it occurs for different purposes. Bullying, giving a threat, or mocking are often occur in real life, altough many people know that those acts are considered as impolite behaviours. In these cases, linguistic strategies are used by them to attack or threat other people’s 3 SKRIPSI LINGUISTIC IMPOLITENESS STRATEGIES... NABILA CHOIRUN NISA IR-PERPUSTAKAAN UNIVERSITAS AIRLANGGA faces. It means, impoliteness is treated as negative act in communication because it can harm other people and also cause a problem such as a social conflict. Linguistic impoliteness has not earned much attention as linguistic politeness, as in appeared in Journal of Pragmatics, only few researchers that discuss about linguistic impoliteness, on the other hand, so many researches have been done about linguistic politeness. When it comes to discussing about linguistic impoliteness, a question like why is it necessary to do a research about linguistic impoliteness may occur. The point why a research about linguistic impoliteness is necessary to be done is because linguistic impoliteness needs to be understood more deeper so that in the future, people will know how to avoid being rude to someone and how to avoid to use abusive or negative words when they are talking to other people. Most importantly, linguistic impoliteness is seen as the negative counterpart of politeness that treated properly in current theory of politeness (Kienpointner dan Manfred 1997). The phenomena of impoliteness can not only happen in real life but it can also happen in media works, such as Movies, TV shows, and so on. Discussing about TV show, people may be familiar with them considering they are not something that missing out from the society. TV shows have been very popular among people in this more modern era when any information and entertainment is given easily on the screen. One of the TV shows that has been very popular in the UK for example, called The Weakest Link. The Weakest Link is a British television quiz show which broadcasted on BBC Two and also BBC One. This 4 SKRIPSI LINGUISTIC IMPOLITENESS STRATEGIES... NABILA CHOIRUN NISA IR-PERPUSTAKAAN UNIVERSITAS AIRLANGGA game show or quiz show involving nine contestants who will take turn to answer several general knowldege questions from the host, Anne Robinson. The purpose of every stage is to create a chain of nine correct answers to collect money for each right answers while they are given a time limit. This TV show is very controversial in the UK because of the host, Anne Robinson appears to be rude to the participants of the game show. Anne had some controversies according to Wikipedia. One of the controversies that she made was she was considered being racist while she described people from Wales as “irritating and annoying” when she showed up as a guest on Room 101. Not only that, there are still some controversies that she made in the past. Anne Robinson is often undirectly or even directly abuse the participants in the gameshow with language that may considered as “Offending” or “insulting”. In The Weakest Link, Anne Robinson abuses the participants in the gameshow based on the identity of the participants. Moreover, she also abuses the participants on how they look with her utterances. Every utterance discloses to an obscure set of conventional discursive resources and mutual knowledge. Each utterance occurs in a situation, in crossroads with other utterances (Haye dan Larrain 2011). This study will focus on discussing the linguistic impoliteness of Anne Robinson, an English television presenter and journalist in BBC. She is labelled as “Queen of Mean” from hosting the BBC game show called The Weakest Link. In this study, the writer is interested in knowing what types of linguistic impoliteness strategies are used by Anne Robinson’s in The Weakest Link which make her appears to be rude and why those utterances are considered as linguistic 5 SKRIPSI LINGUISTIC IMPOLITENESS STRATEGIES... NABILA CHOIRUN NISA IR-PERPUSTAKAAN UNIVERSITAS AIRLANGGA impoliteness and also the function of impoliteness strategy that used by Anne Robinson in the game show. The reason why the writer choosed this topic is because The Weakest Link has been really popular lately among the society, especially people in the United Kingdom. It was first broadcasted in August 2000. In total, The Weakest link has about 1.694 episodes in BBC, BBC Two, and BBC One channel. In order to knowing the impoliteness strategies that are used by Anne Robinson, Culpeper strategies of impoliteness will be used to analyze the utterances. He categorized the five strategies of impoliteness which are Bald on record impoliteness, positive impoliteness, negative impoliteness, sarcasm or mock politeness, withold politeness. The other theory that will be used to analyze the data is the theory of functions of impoliteness strategy by Culpeper (2011) which include Affective impoliteness, Coercive impoliteness, Entertaining impoliteness. 1.2. Statements of the problem This study covers two research questions which are : 1) What types of impoliteness strategies are used by Anne Robinson in BBC Game show The Weakest Link? 2) What are the functions of impoliteness strategies chosen by Anne Robinson in the game show? 1.3.