POLITENESS STRATEGIES OF DIRECTIVES USED BY INDONESIAN AND LIBYAN STUDENTS OF DIPONEGORO UNIVERSITY SEMARANG USING ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Abstract

The objectives of this research are to find out: 1) the politeness strategies of request used by Indonesian and Libyan students in the given situations, 2) the politeness strategies of request mostly used by Indonesian and Libyan students in the given situations, and 3) the factors that influence the use of the strategies by Indonesian and Libyan students in the given situations. This research is a descriptive qualitative research using Oral Discourse Completion Test (DCT), also known as closed role play. Oral DCT is the typical instrument used in pragmatics and was originally developed for comparing the speech act realization patterns of native speakers and learners (Blum-Kulka, 1982). Each of the eight controlled scenarios in the Oral DCT used in this study varies according to power and social distance. The results of this research show: first, that the subjects utilized certain strategies which contained politeness values. Some of the nine strategies were found in their requests. The students exhibited their preference for the use of Query Preparatory that falls under conventionally indirect request to depict politeness and to avoid imposition of requests. Second, both the Indonesian and Libyan students mostly used query preparatory strategy. The strategy of query preparatory was used fourty-three times in the study more than other request strategies, followed by direct and non conventional indirect request strategies. Query preparatory is one of the request strategies identified by the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Research Project (CCSARP) (Blum-Kulka, House, & Kasper, 1989).