Politeness Strategies in Freedom Writers Movie

Abstract

The success of communication is influenced by various factors, one of them is politeness. Politeness is a key means by which humans work out and maintain interpersonal relationships. Therefore, politeness strategies must be applied in humans’ life contexts, included in interaction between teacher and students in the learning process. In the Freedom Writers movie, there are politeness strategies that are used by Erin Gruwell, a teacher, to their students. This research is aimed at describing Erin’s politeness strategies to her students in the classroom and its effects to social intercourse. The researcher uses politeness theory by Brown and Levinson to analyze Erin’s politeness with descriptive qualitative research. Steps to collect the data with watched the movie and noting down all the relevant information. The result shows Erin Gruwell uses all politeness strategies, i.e. bald-on record, positive politeness, negative politeness, and off-record. The effects Erin’s politeness strategies is showed by occur well communication between Erin and hers students. So, the cooperation in the learning process successfully.