Politeness and Impoliteness Expressions of Students and Teacher in English

Classroom Interaction at PPs UNM

Sri Sohriani Maulana

Email: [email protected]

Murni Mahmud
[email protected]

Kisman Salija
[email protected]

English Education Study Program

State University of Makassar, Indonesia

ABSTRACT

This research was conducted to find out the expressions of politeness and
impoliteness used by students and teacher in classroom interaction. This research
applied a qualitative research. The subject of this research was two EFL teachers
and two classes at PPS UNM in 2018/2019 academic year.
The findings of this research showed that the participants expressed
politeness and impoliteness verbally in the English classroom interaction. Those
expressions were categorized in four strategies of politeness and impoliteness. First,
bald on record politeness and impoliteness were employed by the students and
teacher. Second, off record politeness employed by the teacher. Third, positive
politeness and impoliteness employed by the students and teacher. Fourth, negative
politeness and impoliteness employed by the students and teacher. The last finding
of impolite expression is withhold politeness employed by the students and teacher.

Keyword: Politeness, Impoliteness, Classroom Interaction.

INTRODUCTION

Interaction occurs in daily activities between the people. Dagarin (2004:129)

states that interaction is mainly achieved by two means of resources: language and
non-verbal means of expression. It means that the people interact with other people
to express ideas and feelings through both verbally and non verbally. The
interaction also should appear in teaching and learning process in classroom.
Interaction in the classroom is an essential part of teaching and learning process.
According to Içbay (2008:1), through interactions in the classroom, the participants
share what they know, what they feel, what they think and what they plan to do.
The interactions in the classroom are supposed to be polite. In order to make
communication comfortable and to enable students enjoy the conversation. In the
classroom context, especially in a discussion-interaction process, it is important for
students to use formal language as an appropriate language used in classroom

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interaction. Moreover, for postgraduate student’s spoken skill, it is important for
them to use formal language to interact among them in the classroom.
Politeness is one of social phenomenon that plays important roles in human
interaction. Politeness is a strategy of people in being polite to build a harmony in
terms of communication. Yule (2010:135) defines politeness as showing awareness
and consideration of another person’s face. In other words, politeness helps to avoid
conflict which may possibly happens in daily life. However, the opposite
phenomenon of politeness, impoliteness is something that has become more
frequent in social interaction today. Mahmud and Solin (2012:11) states that as the
concern toward politeness increases so as the concern toward impoliteness.
It is clear that the importance of cross-cultural communication is obvious and
therefore comparative studies of the conceptualization and manifestations of
politeness in different cultures must be regarded as vital in an era of growing
internationalization. Moreover, Mahmud (2010) assumes that the roles of linguistic
politeness in Indonesia cannot be denied. She states that since the reformation era,
many critics have been uttered when Indonesian people talk to each other especially
in their daily life
The phenomenon of impoliteness is to do with how offense is conducted upon
the language. The impoliteness language will cause social conflict and disharmony
between teacher and students. Language impoliteness which is uttered by male and
female students is different one to another based on the cultural and social attributes.
Students who utter impoliteness to their teacher happened in classroom interaction.
Classroom interaction plays an important role in teaching and learning process. It
functions to build a pleasant atmosphere in the classroom and encourages students
to become effective communicators (Dagarin, 2004: 128).

POLITENESS

The basic concept adopted in this research is politeness which was developed
by Brown & Levinson (1987). They assume that each participant is endowed with
what they call face, which is developed into negative face and positive face. One's
negative face includes claims to territories, to freedom of action and freedom from
imposition. Ones positive face involves the needs for social approval, or the want
to be considered desirable by at least some others. It is based on the presumption
that, as part of a strategy for maintaining their own face, the mutual interest of
participants in a conversation is to maintain their face from others.
Therefore, in case of communication, people need politeness strategy in order
to get a good response from the hearers. Holmes (1992: 296-297) states that being
polite involves speaking to people appropriately in the light of their relationship to
us, understanding the social values of a society, and understanding the dimension
of formality.

Politeness Strategies
According to Brown and Levinson (1987: 68), politeness strategies are
developed in order to save the hearer’s “face”. Brown and Levinson (1987 : 68)
then propose possible strategies that interlocutors can use to deal with face

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threatening acts. In discussing politeness, we deal with “face‟. Face means public
self image of a person. It refers to that emotional and social sense of self that every
person has and expects everyone else to recognize (Yule, 1996: 60). Brown and
Levinson states that face is something that was emotionally invested, and that can
be lost, maintained, or enhanced, and must be conventionally attended to in
interaction (1987: 61). Meanwhile, in many forms of face to face interaction, all
participants will be concerned to maintain not only their own face but also the others
face. Therefore, Face Threatening Acts (FTAs) can be explained as acts that
infringe on the hearer‟ need to maintain his/her self esteem, and be respected.
Politeness strategies are developed for the main purpose of dealing with these
FTAs.
In relation with this understanding, politeness is an interaction that can be
defined as the means employed to show awareness of another person’s face. The
awareness includes the relative power relationship between speaker and hearer, the
social distance between speaker and hearer, and the individual ranking of the
particular imposition in the social context in which it is used. Brown and Levinson
(1987: 70) describe “face” as “the public self image that every member wants to
claim for himself, consisting in two related aspects: negative face and positive face.
Negative face is the want of every competent adult member‟ that his actions be
unimpeded by others. Positive face is the want of every member that his wants be
desirable to at least some others. Brown and Levinson (1987) also state that in
human communication, either spoken or written, people tend to maintain one
another's face continuously, and this tendency adds up to politeness. If the hearers‟
need to maintain his/her self-esteem, and be respected is violated by an act during
conversation, they call these acts as “Face Threating Acts” (FTAs). Brown and
Levinson (1987, p.60) offered four politeness strategies in order to deal with these
FTAs: “bald on record, negative politeness, positive politeness and off-record
indirect”.
Politeness strategies are developed by Brown and Levinson as follows.
1) Bald On-record politeness: This strategy is performed in the most direct, clear,
unambiguous and concise way as possible. This strategy is used in situations
where people know ea
2) Off-record: This strategy is more indirect. The speaker does not impose on
thehearer. As a result, face is not directly threatened. This strategy often requires
the hearer to interpret what the speaker is saying. Off-record strategy is used by
the speaker to achieve a communicative intention indirectly. Example: Here, he
will say “Iforgot my pen” instead of "Can you lend me a pen?”
3) Positive Politeness: This strategy tries to minimize the threat to the audience’s
positive face. This can be done by attending to the audience’s needs, invoking
equality and feelings of belonging to the group, hedging or indirectness, avoiding
disagreement, using humor and optimism and making offers and promises.
Example:
“Hey Buddy, I’d appreciate it if you lend me one of your pen because I missed
my pen at home”.
Here, the speaker tries to intimate and treats the heater as a close friend by
addressing the heater using “Buddy”.

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4) Negative Politeness: This strategy tries to minimize threats to the audience’s
negative face. This can be done by being indirect, using hedges or questions,
minimizing imposition and apologizing. Example:
”Sorry to bother, may I borrow your pen? ”
The speaker saves the hearer’s negative by using apology to imposition
“Sorry to bother” and using a modal verb “may”.

IMPOLITENESS

Culpeper (1996) defines impoliteness as the opposite of politeness. His

initial work is based on Brown and Levinson's theory of politeness. Furthermore,
Bousfield (2008:272) takes impoliteness to be the broad opposite of politeness, in
that, rather than seeking to mitigate face-threatening acts (FTAs). According to
Mugford (2008: 375) impoliteness can be seen in terms of either breaking social
norms or being deliberately offensive and disrespectful towards an interactant.

Impoliteness Strategies
Culpeper presents a model of impoliteness that is basically the counterpart
of Brown and Levinson’s politeness model. Culpeper takes Brown and Levinson's
strategies and inverts them to describe impoliteness and their purpose is to attack
the hearer's face instead of trying to save them. Culpeper (1996:356) takes Brown
and Levinson's four super-strategies (bald-on-record, positive politeness, negative
politeness and off-record) and inverts them to describe impoliteness: thus, Culpeper
analyses impoliteness as consisting of bald on record impoliteness, positive
impoliteness, negative impoliteness, sarcasm or mock politeness and withhold
politeness. These strategies are:
l) Bald on record impoliteness. Bald on record impoliteness is seen as typically
being deployed where there is an intention on the part of the speaker to attack
the face of the bearer. The utterances are deployed in a direct, clear,
unambiguous and concise way in situations where face is not irrelevant or
minimized. Examples:
“Shut that door”
“Don’t talk”
”Do your work”
Furthermore, it can be concluded that bald on record impoliteness can be realized
in the form of using direct, clear, and unambiguous
2) Positive impoliteness. According to Culpeper (2003:1555), the use of strategies
designed to damage the addressee’s positive face wants. The strategy includes
ignore the other, exclude the other from an activity, be disinterested,
unconcerned, unsympathetic, use inappropriate identity markers, use obscure
or secretive language, seek disagreement, use taboo words, and use derogatory
remarks.
3) Negative impoliteness. According to Culpeper (2003:1555), the use of strategies
designed to damage the addressee’s negative face wants. It attacks the
addressee‘s negative face, which is the basic claim to territories, personal
preserves, rights to non-distraction. Sarcasm or mock politeness. The FTA is

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 performed with the use of obviously insincere strategies. Sarcasm is mock
politeness for social disharmony and it is the opposite of banter which means
mock impoliteness for social harmony (Culpeper, 2003:1555). Sarcasm
constitutes the use of individual or combined strategies and remains on the
surface and appears to be appropriate. On the surface level, the utterances sound
polite but their meaning is the opposite. Here, the face threatening acts are
performed with the use of politeness strategies that are obviously insincere.
4) Withhold politeness. The absence of politeness in situations where it is expected.
In this strategy, the speaker does not perform a politeness act where the heater
would expect one. Being silent is also withholding politeness. Then, Culpeper
(2005 : 42) gives the example that “failing to thank someone for a present may
be taken as deliberate impoliteness”.

METHOD OF RESEARCH
This research is under area of discourse analysis. Discourse analysis is the
analysis that focused on the relationship between language and its context.
Discourse analysis covers language in use either written text or spoken data, from
conversation to a highly established form of conversation.
This research is qualitative research. According to Hancock (1998:1),
qualitative research concerned with developing explanations of social phenomena.
Hancock also states that, qualitative research aims to help us to understand the
world in which we live and why things are the way they are. Qualitative research
was concerned with process, rather than simple outcomes or product, qualitative
research tends to analyze the data inductively. In this case, the researcher used this
method to describe the factor causing the use of polite and impolite expression by
students and teachers, the reasons the students and teachers employ polite and
impolite expressions, and the effects of politeness and impoliteness in classroom
interaction at PPs UNM.
In analyzing the data, the researcher use Miles and Huberman (2014)
interactive models. Those are; transcribing, analyzing, categorizing or classifying,
and interpreting data.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

1. Politeness and Impoliteness Expressions of the Students
Politeness

a. Bald on Record Politeness

Extracts 1: Metaphorical Urgency
T: now, decided your group name, I’m going to <XwordX>what topic
<XwordX>...so what is your group name?
S18: lionfish
S19: lionfish
S15: Me too in lionfish group, please!!!
S18: iye, masukmeq Kak (Yah, let’s Join)
T: sorry?
S19: lionfish sir.

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 Based on Extracts 1 above, it shows that student 15 (S15) wanted to join
Lionsfish group by saying “Me too in lionfish group, please!!”. It indicates that
metaphorical urgency because student 15 know that she will be accepted in Lionfish
group and in that group some of the members are her close friends. This strategy
describes why orders and begging, which have inverted assumptions about the
relative status of S15 and S18.

b. Positive Politeness
Extracts 2: Promise
T: Yah, any question?... okay, I think that is all. See you again next week. So
please read about the material. No more question? ..Delviana Manga is out
of this class?
SS: Yes sir

Based on Extracts 2, it shows that the teacher told about schedule for next
week. The teacher asked them to save it. The students promise to save it. Thus, the
teacher’s positive face has been fulfilled because the student has appreciated his.

c. Negative Politeness
Extracts 3: Apoligize

S2: Mau ka bertanya( I want to ask you?)

S1: Kenapa bertanya sama saya ih (Why do you want to ask Me?)
S2: Sorry disturbing you, bdw Tomorrow pade (Sorry for disturbing you, by the
way, how about tomorrow?)
S1: Sembarang ji (it’s up to you)
S2: Ok (Ok)

Based on Extracts 3 above, the utterance that student said indicates negative
politeness. In the conversation, student 2 (S2) asked student 1 (S1) by saying
“Mauka Bertanya (I want to ask you?). But student 1 (S1) felt annoyed by her
friend. Finally his friend apologizes by saying “Sorry disturbing you”to minimized
threats to his friend’s face. From the Extracts above there are several sentences that
indicated negative politeness. This can be done by being indirect, using hedges or
questions, minimizing imposition and apologizing.

Impoliteness
a. Bald On Record Impoliteness
Extracts 4: Asking to be quiet
S6: Ssstt, Diamko e (Be quite)
S7: Ributna (It’s too busy)

Based on Extracts 4 above, it shows that student 6 (S6) directly attack their
friendsby saying be quiet and another students said ributna. In this case, student 6
and student 7 felt that the situation in their classroom was very busy and they tried

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to make it more comfortable. It indicates that bald on record impoliteness can be
relized in the form of using direct, and clear.

b. Positive Impoliteness
Extracts 5: Taboo
T: it’s hard to do this. Some teachers do. You can, i can’t. I can, You can’t. So
how do you build this? ..mungkin perempuan lebih cocok yah. Because they
playing with feelings
S21: with feelings
T: yah sensitif
S8: Sensitif banget sir
S9: Apalagi itu sana e
S10: @@@ awas keluarki aura hantuna@@@ (be carefully, she will be a
ghost)
S7: Ko kenapa smuakah, kampret!!! (what’s going on?, kampret).

Based on Extracts 5 above, in the conversation above there were some words
that indicate positive impoliteness; some students attack their friends’ positive face
by saying “apalagi itu sana e, awas keluar aura hantuna, (be carefully, she will
be a ghost)”. Then their friend replied by saying “ko kenapa smuakah, kampret!!!
(what’s going on?, kampret).”. In this case, taboo word attacked the positive
students face.

c. Negative Impoliteness
Extracts6: Criticize
S1: Kau itu begitu (You are like that)
S2: Laughing
S3: Kau deh bibirmu nyet ( your lips, monkey)
S2: Laughing
S1: Make Upmu (your make up)

Based on Extracts 6 above, it shows that the student criticize her friends’s
make up by saying “Kau deh bibirmunyet ( your lips, monkey) and Make Upmu
(your make up)”,. In this casestudent 3and student 1 did not think about their
friend’s feeling.They attacked their friends’ face with impolite
utterences.Therefore, it is impolite, especially in our culture. Calling people or
someone with higher role without addressing their title or using sure name is
considered as an impolite expression and do not respect the people.

d. Withhold Politeness
Extracts7: Being Silent
S6: Ndri. Do you love me?.
S9: (Silent)

Based on Extracts 7 above, it indicates withhold politeness with realizations

by being silent because student 6 (S6) with his self confident said “Ndri. Do you

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love me?” but the Student 9 (S9) gave no response for that. Therefore, the student
ignored her friend by showing her bad face and keep silent.

DISCUSSION

This part illustrated some Extracts of a conversation between students and

teacher in the classroom. To find out the types of politeness and impoliteness used
by the students and teacher, the researcher did the observation by utilizing
observation checklist and video recording to get broad descriptions of the types of
politeness and impoliteness that happened in the classroom interaction totally in
five meetings.
The first type of politeness strategy is bald on record politeness. The
students and the teacher used bald on record politeness. The first finding shows that
bald on recorded appear in classroom interaction. Bald on record politeness were
employed by both students and teacher. The students and teacher's polite utterances
were performed in the most direct, clear, unambiguous and concise way as possible.
The students and teacher’s politeness expressions emerged in Extracts 1. In this
sense, all Extracts of student and teacher’s politeness were expressed in imperative
form. It was classified as bald on record politeness.
The second type of politeness strategy is off record. This strategy can be
found in extracts 2.This strategy is more indirect. The speaker does not impose on
the hearer. As a result, face is not directly threatened. This strategy often requires
the hearer to interpret what the speaker is saying. Off-record strategy is used by the
speaker to achieve a communicative intention indirectly
The third type of politeness strategy is positive politeness. The expression
of students and teacher indicated as positive politeness can be found in extracts 3.
The expressions of humor, optimism and making offers and promises were
identified as positive politeness’ characteristics.
The last type of politeness strategy that the researcher found is negative
politeness. The expressions of this strategy can be found in Extracts 4.
The next finding is impoliteness strategy. The findings of impoliteness
expression showed that bald on record impoliteness, expressions were in extractss
1. Then, Positive impoliteness emerged in classroom interaction. The expressions
of students’ utterances indicating positive impoliteness can be found in Extracts 2.
The expressions of unsympathetic, in disinterested and derigatory remarks were
identified as positive impoliteness's characteristics. In Extractss 3 were expressions
of unsympathetic and disinterested. While words sotta and kampret in extracts 4
were categorized as taboo and derigatory remarks. Those utterances were identified
as impoliteness, because it has a negative meaning and causing disharmony among
students, Culpeper (996:357) states that the use of strategies designed to damage
the addresses’s positive face. The strategy includes ignoring the other, excluding
the other from an activity, be disinterested, unconcerned, unsympathetic use in
appropriate identity markers, use obscure or strategies designed to damage the
addressee's language, seek disagreement, use taboo words, and use derogatory
remarks. The next strategy is negative impoliteness and withhold impoliteness.
These strategies can be found in extracts 5.

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