THE STUDY
Research Question
All the framework above are composed to define and provide a bold line towards the main
research question: “how is politeness strategies employed by the host of popular-based talk show
to mitigate FTAs?” This research is conducted to identify and describe how the hosts of talk shows
employ politeness strategies to avoid FTA while still elicit a lot of information from the Celebrity.
This study will only focus on one popular issue-based talk show, the “Hitam Putih” show.
Context of the Study
“HitamPutih” is a television popular Issue-based talk show program produced by Trans7
channel. This talk show contains a mind reading format. It means that the host can make the guest
stars rendered powerless cornered by the host’s questions. Here, the writer analyzed the questions
uttered by the host and determined whether certain question fell into Brown’s and Levinson’s
(1987) strategy of politeness.
Participant
The participant of this study was the host of “Hitam Putih”, Deddy Corbuzier. His
utterances (questions) to his guests of the talk show were used as the data to this study. The
utterances were taken from three full episodes.
Method of Research
This study is a qualitative descriptive research in which the data were discussed
of understanding a social or human problem, based on building a complex, holistic picture, formed
with words, reporting detailed views of informants, and conducted in a natural setting.”
This qualitative research has the aim of providing a description of politeness strategies in
a particular context, as descriptive research will answer the question of what are the characteristics
of politeness strategies on specific context, by observing the phenomenon based on theory being
studied.
Data Collection and analysis
Observing is one kind of qualitative data collection, it is possible to see how they actually
behave. Observation can also serve as a technique to verify information provided in face-to-face
encounters and it is important for politeness strategy paper because the writer could see the
non-verbal responds through observing. In this research, the writer observed the environment. It could
provide valuable background information about the environment where a research project is being
undertaken. Video recording is one technique for collecting data through observation. This allows
events to be reviewed time after time.
Politeness strategies used by the host in their utterances was examined. Sentences were
picked up from three videos and manually transcribed, and all of the videos were made on 2013
and 2014. The data were analyzed to find how the host mitigated FTAs. This study used qualitative
analysis based on the Politeness Strategies theory proposed by Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987).
The data were analyzed and discussed based on Brown & Levinson’s (1978, 1987) theory of
politeness: bald on record, positive politeness, and negative politeness, because this theory has
been the most influential framework of politeness so far.
It is important to describe the theory of Brown and Levinson’s in a particular phenomenon,
such as a popular based talk show to give different character of Brown and Levinson theory of
politeness strategies. I ensure the findings of this study promote awareness of language learners to
apply politeness strategy in the similar context of this study. Moreover, the realization of a course
about pragmatic competence is suggested to offer in English Department Satya Wacana Christian
University to provide them with deeper understanding about pragmatic in order to create awareness
