POLITENESS STRATEGY IN AMERICAN FOLKTALES: “JACK ANDTHE BEANSTALK”

Abstract

Politeness is used as the means by speaker to show awareness of listeners’ face or other people’s face.People use politeness to safe other people’s face. Politeness is a part of people’s knowledge to haveappropriate behavior in certain situation and to keep good interaction and social relation with other people.In this case, politeness is used to save face in order to have and keep a good interaction. This paper focusesin analyzing the Politeness Strategy in American Folktales “Jack and the Beans Talk.” The data werecollected by reading and analyzing the folktales. This paper also discussed the types of positive politenessused by the main characters in the folktales. The study hopes to add a new perspective on how Americanfolktales as literary discourse can be analyzed from a linguistic or socio-pragmatic background. In additionto this, it may also help in revealing some insights related to the phenomenon of politeness in the literarydiscourse in the American culture that will help readers from other cultures to achieve better understandingand interaction when dealing with literary texts.