INTRODUCTION
“Face” is, “The positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line
others assume he has taken during a particular contact (Goffman 1967:5)”. Face is understood as
something that is emotionally invested, and that can be not only lost, but also maintained or enhanced (Thomas, 1995). However, in a talk show utterances from the host or interviewer can
possibly be threatening the interviewee’s or celebrity’s face. Therefore, both the host and celebrity need to be careful in questioning and answering. The act of saving face is more difficult by the
presence of the audience. In casual conversation the speaker only needs to consider the hearer´s perception of face threatening acts. On the other hand, a host in a talk show is constantly watched
over and judged by the audience too.
Talk shows have been part of television broadcast since 1951, and now they are grown and aired in all over television channels worldwide. In Indonesia, according to “10 most famous TV
shows” polled by the online version of Tabloid Bintang, an Indonesian tabloid. Unscripted talk show (popular as “popular issue-based talk show”) like”Hitam Putih” is ranked number seventh. Talk shows deal with the reality of human existence, and provide a forum involving the presenter,
guests, and the audience for a discussion. Therefore, talk shows concern more about politeness than the other TV shows.
In this study "popular issue-based" talk shows are the main concern. This kind of talk show is exposing people's private lives for the sake of entertainment, and its goal is more on human
plays an important role in the talk show. In a talk show like “HitamPutih”, interviewing celebrity is little bit tricky for the host, because he cannot rely so much on the factual information (p.26). In
an interview like this, the host should be more curious about the information that is not published by media. Norrick (2010) also implies that celebrity has disadvantages in an interview like these, since talk shows are ordered to keep the audience interested and entertained, the host has to elicit
personal information, by which the celebrity is forced to share.
Impoliteness in a talk show negatively influences the way a person is judged of being “rude”, “uncooperative” or “offhand” (Watts, 2002, p.2), since the information that is elicited is
often unpleasant to be communicated and threatening the celebrity. Therefore, the host of a talk show needs to be aware of politeness through the utterances they produce in the show. This
phenomenon led the writer to think that people need to understand how to question people without threatening their face. Therefore, the writer conducted this study of politeness in a popular-based
talk show. This study aims at identifying and describing the politeness strategies employed by the host of popular-based talk show to mitigate FTAs
This study is significant to provide a description of Brown and Levinson’s (1987) theory
in a particular phenomenon, like other research done by many researchers in other particular phenomena. This study focuses on popular Issue-based talk show to describe different characters
of Brown and Levinson’s theory of politeness strategies.
Based on the theory briefly, bald on record is uses and does not attempt to minimize the
whereas negative politeness aims at softening the disruption on the addressee’s freedom of action. Final courtesy strategy outlined by Brown and Levinson is an off-record strategy, this particular
strategy are rarely mention and explain here in the study. Off-record startegy itself simply insinuating the listeners without directly asking the listeners. To give you more clear information we give an example. In a context of lending money a speaker may use “Give me a dollar” as bald
on record strategy, “Hey, mate, can you lend me a dollar?” as positive politeness, “Perhaps, you
