3.1 Face The politeness theory of Brown and Levinson
(1978) has become a paradigm for study on politeness
strategy. The central point of Brown's and Levinson's
theory is the idea of the face, as suggested by
Goffman (1967) who described the face as:
"The positive social interest of an individual
essentially claims for himself the line taken by others
during a particular touch." The face is an image of
oneself with accepted social attributes–albeit an
image that others can share as if a person shows his
occupation or religion with good shows for himself."
(Goffman 1967:5).
3.2 FTA According to Brown and Levinson (1987, 1978),
acts of facial threats may threaten the face of the
speaker or the face of the audience, threatening the
face, either positive or negative. FTA or Face
Threatening Act involves showing expressions of
thanks, condolences, promises, and non-verbal
behaviours such as stumbling, falling or utterances
threatening each other's intrinsic face (positive or
negative). It also includes disagreement critique,
requests, lousy news and demand. For example,
simple demands threaten the negative face of the
target because compliance with the request interferes
with its will to remain independent. Besides, FTA is
an act that threatens an interlocutor's face. Brown and
Levinson (1987:65) proposed that when facing the
need for FTA, a person should either explicitly and
effectively execute FTA, or attempt to mitigate the
effect of FTA on the positive and negative face of the
listener.
3.2 Politeness Strategies The concepts of politeness strategies are
developed
to
prevent
someone
from
being
embarrassed or from feeling uncomfortable, to save
the listener's "face". The politeness strategies of
Brown and Levinson (1978) could be divided into
four
main
strategies:
bald-on-record,
positive
politeness,
negative
politeness
and
off-record
politeness strategies. Throughout his research,
Hamuddin (2012) thought that these four techniques
could still be used in the current situation.
3.2.1 Bald-on-record According to Brown and Levinson (1978:74), bald
on record strategy is a direct way of saying things,
without any minimization to the imposition, in a
direct, clear, unambiguous and concise way. There are
different kinds of bald-on-record usage in different
circumstances. It is because the speaker can have
different motives for their wants to do the FTA with
minimum efficiency. The motives fall into two
classes; one is where the face threat is not minimised
and therefore ignored or irrelevant, and the other is
where in doing the FTA bald on record, the speaker
minimises face threats by implication. Brown and
Levinson (1977:100) provide the example of a bald-
on-record strategy and suggest that the use of bald-on-
record direct imperatives is evident. Imperatives are
often smoothed with hedges or traditional signs of
politeness.
3.2.2 Positive politeness The second strategy is constructive politeness and
is usually found in groups of friends or in situations
where people of certain social circumstances are