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language especially in our expression in communicating with others. In fact, the
meaning of politeness is not as easy as that. According to Yule (1996), politeness can be
said as a set of rules to be polite in an interaction within a certain culture
(p. 60). As
addition,
another researcher,
Hill et al. (1986),
also gives his concept about what
politeness is. According to Hill et al (1986),
politeness is defined as
“one of the
constraints on human interaction, whose purpose is to consider others’ feelings, establish
levels of mutual comfort, and promote support” (as stated from Watts, 2003, p. 50).
Additionally, Coulmas (2005) also said
that “… politeness appears not as a
decorum added to what really matters (the propositional content of an utterance), but
rather as fundamental to social life” (p. 84). From those brief explanations, it can be seen
that politeness is not just about the expression in communicating but
it is something
more about behavior that we want to show to the society in an appropriate way.
2.3
Brown and Levinson’s Theory of Politeness
Actually, politeness is not a brand new topic in linguistics area. As stated from
Jaszczolt (2002), the researcher
as Erving Goffman
(1967)
has already proposed the
concept of politeness (p. 318). His concept
is just followed by other researcher and it is
also followed by Brown and Levinson (1978).
The theory of politeness by Brown and Levinson (1978) has become one of some
famous politeness theories. Even Stockwell (2007, p. 28) noted that this theory as one of
influential model of politeness. This theory describes
all about politeness completely
from the concept of face until the strategies of politeness itself.
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