The Occurrence of Conflict Due To The Miscalculation of The Weightiness of The FTA in 'NYC 22'.

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ii Maranatha Christian University

ABSTRACT

Skripsi ini membahas pentingnya bersikap sopan dalam kehidupan sehari-hari terutama saat kita melakukan percakapan dengan orang lain. Sumber data diambil dari film seri Amerika berjudul NYC 22.

NYC 22 bercerita tentang kehidupan para polisi baru di dunia kerja mereka. Hidup sebagai seorang polisi tidaklah mudah. Banyak masalah terjadi dan konflik pun tak terelakkan.

Dalam skripsi ini, saya mencoba untuk menganalisa konflik yang terjadi dalam film seri NYC 22. Konflik bisa terjadi karena berbagai hal, namun di dalam skripsi ini, saya berfokus dalam menganalisa konflik yang terjadi karena salah perhitungan dalam mengaplikasikan strategi kesopanan. Ada empat strategi kesopanan yang saya jelaskan dalam skripsi ini dan skripsi ini juga memuat tentang aspek yang harus dipikirkan sebelum berinteraksi dengan orang lain.

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

In daily life, we communicate with other people. We are social creatures unable to live alone. We need other people to interact with us. We cannot live to our heart’s content because we will make others angry and uncomfortable when we express our intentions impolitely. We simply need other people to help us and vice versa. In order to interact with, to communicate with others, to ask people to help us, to show our interest, we are led to apply politeness. Without politeness, it will not be easy for us to ask others to lend us a hand.

One of the experts in pragmatics, Robin Lakoff, suggests that people should apply politeness while having an interaction with others and the reason why she suggests the use of politeness is to ensure the interaction run smoothly.

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2 Maranatha Christian University something you owe yourself” (Holm 121). These are examples why we have to be polite and understand the important rules of communicating with others.

We sometimes find problems where the hearers get angry with the speakers because the speakers speak without paying attention to the politeness or the important rules in communicating with others. For example, there is a boy and a girl. Although they are not socially close to each other, they have the same status as students. When the boy asks the girl to lend him her book and says, “Give me that!” the girl will be angry because the girl thinks that the boy has threatened her face. The boy should not have uttered that sentence because such an utterance only fits for a person who has power over another or only if they have a close relationship. This case shows us how people often threaten others’ face. Thus in pragmatics, this term is well defined as politeness.

Sometimes politeness is miscalculated. The miscalculations of the politeness strategies are known as Face Threatening Act or can be simplified as FTA (Thomas 169). Since many cases show that people often threaten others’ face, I would like to analyze further about politeness strategies used in conversations and the miscalculation of politeness strategies that lead to the occurrences of tense atmosphere. From the example that has been shown before, it can clearly be seen that people who do not apply the politeness strategies in conversing with others will make others have his/her face threatened.

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distant from us. These facts make me interested and I would like to take this topic to be analyzed in my thesis.

From my explanation above, I can say that the significance of my thesis is that people who read this thesis will be more aware of and realize the importance of being polite in having conversation with others, so that they can make others pleased while revealing their intentions.

The corpus of my data to be analyzed in this thesis comes from the TV series titled NYC 22. NYC 22 is an action movie which consists of one season only and includes thirteen episodes. NYC 22 is a drama series which involves new six diverse New York police officers. There are a number of tense atmosphere that lead to the occurrence of the conflict found in this movie.

In the TV series, there are a lot of miscalculations of the politeness strategies which can be seen when the characters say harsh words to others, treat others harshly due to others’ being impolite and so on. I choose to analyze this movie because I think there are many conversations in which conflicts happen due to the miscalculation of the politeness strategies between one person and another. Moreover, the characters have distant relationship between one another because they are new police officers and are placed together in guarding a place, solving problems, and the like. This is why they have to communicate and interact with their partners. However, despite the fact that they are strangers, they sometimes miscalculate the politeness strategy they should apply. Because of their miscalculation of politeness strategies, others feel displeased and angry.

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4 Maranatha Christian University conversing with others. Therefore, my thesis topic is “The Occurrence of Conflict Due To the Miscalculation of the Weightiness of the FTA in NYC 22”.

My topic belongs to Pragmatics. Pragmatics is meaning in interaction. What is meant by interaction here is our interaction with others, by simply having conversations with other people. Pragmatics has many areas of interest such as the study of meaning in context, the study of speaker’s meaning and the study of implicatures. As for the detail, pragmatics as the study of speaker’s meaning means utterances produced by the speaker, thus the utterances interprets by the hearer of the message (Thomas, 1948).

The specific theories I use in analyzing NYC 22 movie are politeness strategies and the management of face. Jenny Thomas in her book Meaning in

Interaction: an Introduction to Pragmatics asserts that politeness means that a

speaker shows awareness of another person’s face and tries to avoid and dismiss the damage of threatening the hearer’s face. Face itself is defined as the public self-image of a person.

1.2 Statements of the Problems

1. What is the speech event?

2. How does the miscalculation of the FTA happen in the scene?

3. How does the miscalculation of the FTA make the conflict occur in the scene?

1.3 Purpose of the Study

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2. To know how miscalculation of the FTA happens in the scene.

3. To know how the miscalculation of the FTA makes the conflict occurred in the scene.

1.4 Methods of Research

The source of data to analyze in my thesis is from the movie series titled NYC 22. First, I went to the DVD station which sells many kind of movies. I chose some films with different genres such as horror, war, politics, drama and so on. Then, I picked NYC 22 TV series. I watched NYC 22 and noted down conversations that contain miscalculating the politeness strategies that resulted in conflict. Afterwards, I looked for the theories from the internet and books concerned with politeness and the weightiness of the FTA. Lastly, I wrote the report and the analysis of my thesis about the politeness strategies in NYC 22 TV series.

1.5 Organization of the Thesis

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26 Maranatha Christian University

CHAPTER FOUR

CONCLUSION

So far, from Chapter One to Chapter Three, we have known about the background of the creation of this thesis, which is about the importance of politeness in society. We have also known that in society, in interacting with other people, we have to be able to calculate the weightiness of the Face Threatening Acts which will lead us in choosing the appropriate politeness strategy to be applied in conversing with others.

Miscalculating the weightiness of the FTA will result in others’ losing face and a conflict to happen. Here, in the last chapter, Chapter Four, I am trying to draw a conclusion based on the findings I have presented in the previous chapter and I will also like to give my personal opinion about the TV series in relevant to the topic.

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self-26 Maranatha Christian University image is called face in pragmatics and is divided into two, positive and negative face. The strategies to use are called politeness strategies. I have stated four common strategies; they are bald on-record, positive politeness, negative politeness and off-record politeness strategy. In addition, there are three elements used in calculating the weightiness of the FTA, they are Power (P), Distance (D) and Rate of Imposition (R). One high element, it means we have to be careful and be more aware about the strategy to apply.

As we read Chapter Three, we know that politeness is an important thing to have. People will feel displeased and uncomfortable if there are people who do not show politeness in their daily behavior. People who do not apply politeness in their utterances or behavior, will make others feel unpleasant and get angry with them. Four examples come from this thesis.

The first data shows us that the hearer gets angry with the speaker because the speaker underestimates the hearer’s job. The use of nickname is good, but the speaker in the first data uses the nickname inappropriately without thinking about the social distance between them. The second data also shows us the use of nickname inappropriately. Adding with the use of rate of imposition, the conflict happens in data 2 is greater than the first.

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27 Maranatha Christian University miscalculation of calculating the weightiness of the FTA will result in others’ feel their face threatened, the tense atmosphere rises and the conflict cannot be avoided.

I think the film I chose as my source data is very good. NYC 22 talks about the life of new police officers in doing their job. The job as a police officer is good to be discussed in my thesis because from some aspects, the job is more powerful than the other jobs.

This film is also good from the point of social distance. I believe that because all the characters are all new police officers, the aspect of distance is high. However, sometimes they are careless in interacting with their new friends. This, of course, makes it very possible for conflicts to happen. In terms of rate of imposition, the second data is the example in which the aspect of rate of imposition is ignored. So, basically, when one of the three aspects is high, we should pay more attention to the politeness strategy used. If we fail to calculate the weightiness, it will threaten others’ face.

NYC 22 provides plenty of data that I can use for my thesis. There are many conflicts happening in this film. The conflicts are various; it can be between teenagers and the police officers or even between one police officer to other police officers.

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28 Maranatha Christian University In my opinion, taking politeness strategy as a thesis topic is very interesting and challenging in both ways. It is interesting because I can watch the film and carefully search for the conflicts that caused by the miscalculation of the weightiness of the FTA. It is also challenging because I did not find as many data as I had expected before. Although there are many conflicts happening in the film, it is quite difficult to search for a conflict that is really caused by someone who miscalculates the three aspects. Thus, because it is interesting and challenging, I think it is not boring to take this topic to be analyzed.

If other researchers like watching films and analyzing it, it will be fun to take the topic of miscalculation of the politeness strategy. My suggestion for other researchers who would like to take the topic is to find a film which is really suitable for the topic. Finding the right film will be quite difficult. That is why a serial is more suitable. The reason is that serials are longer than one-episode films. Longer films will give you more possibility to gather the necessary data. The longer the film, the smaller problem in facing insufficient data for the thesis will be.

Then, after finding a good film which is long enough to be analyzed, start to enrich yourself with the theory of the politeness strategy, the weightiness of the FTA seen from the three aspects; power, distance and rate of imposition, and the definition of face itself. After mastering the theory well, start watching the film and take notes on every event in the film which are related to the topic. It would be perfect to look up for the background of the film and every character’s personal information.

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29 Maranatha Christian University

BIBLIOGRAPHY

References

conflict. Oxford University Press, n.d. Web. 29 April 2014.

Good Reads. HMH Books for Young Readers, 1 January 2004. Web. 5 March

2014.

JENNY THOMAS. Prezi Inc, 28 September 2012. Web. 27 April 2014.

Khaled Hosseini. The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, n.d. Web. 3 September 2013.

Marx & Conflict Theory – Analysis of Power in Society. Academia, September

2009. Web. 29 April 2014.