Linguistic Impoliteness Strategies in Anne Robinson's Utterances in Bbc

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,

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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. Objectives of the study This study is aimed to:

1) Finds out the types of linguistic impoliteness strategies that are used by

Anne Robinson in The Weakest Link.

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2) Identifies the function of impoliteness strategies that chosen by Anne

Robinson to speak in the gameshow dialogue.

1.4. Significance of the study This study contributes the importance of knowing why a particular

utterance can make someone appear to be impolite. As we know that many

previous research had been done on politeness. But in some cases, the writer

thinks that it is also necessary to do a research on linguistic impoliteness. In a

practical way, this study will teach the readers to avoid using some impoliteness

expressions that may insult or abuse other people.

In a theoritical way, this study is expected to develop more knowledge

about linguistic impoliteness especially in pragmatics aspect, considering there are

numerous studies that discuss about politeness but we rarely find studies that

discuss about impoliteness/rudeness. The result of this study, later on, can also be

developed by further researchers that might want to examine more about linguistic

impoliteness but in a different perspective.

1.5. Definition of Key Terms

According the backgorund of the study, the writer found some words that

may need more explanation in order to make the people who may not come from

a linguistic background understand what the words mean. So, the writer

formulated these several terms :

Face Threatening Acts (FTA) : One’s self image which challenged by

interlocutors either positive face or negative face (Brown and Levinson 1987).

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Impoliteness : All behaviour which is not accepted culturally and morally in

social setting. Usually performed by someone to attack one person’s face in

interaction (Culpeper 2011).

Impoliteness Strategies : The strategies that used by the adresser in order to

attack the addressee’s face (Culpeper 1996).

Politeness : All behaviour that is culturally and morally accepted in a social

setting (Laitinen 2010).

Pragmatics : A sub-field of linguistics that studies about the relation between

context and meaning.

Utterance : Spoken language whih followed by silence or change of a

speaker. Utterance is the basic unit of social life. Usually performed as an active

response and as a position taking towards other positions (Haye dan Larrain

2011).

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