Politeness Strategies Used in the First Trump-Clinton Presidential Debate

Abstract

The way speaker appreciating and maintaining the condition to the recipient in the communication is called politeness. Being polite is complicated but sometimes interesting thing in any language. This study focused on analyses the types of politeness strategy expressed by the speakers and analyze what factors were influenced the chosen of politeness strategy implemented by the speakers. However the population in this study is all people in who come in this presidential debate and the sample are Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and the moderator.  The data collection method used was documentation method which applied to get the data. The instrument used was the researcher by hearing, observing, and taking a note during the presidential debate. Then, the data analysis method was descriptive qualitative method by analyzing the transcript of debate. It can be concluded that there were four types of politeness strategy found: bald-on-record strategy, positive politeness strategy, negative politeness strategy, and off-record strategy. The result of study found that there were two factors applied in the debate, which are payoff factors and sociological factors. The implication of this study was politeness strategy by Brown and Levinson was known by readers and also this politeness strategy used could be used in our communication, especially for the people who join the election.