Positive and Negative Politeness Strategies Used in the House of Representative Members’ Discourse: A Case Study in Medan, Indonesia

Abstract

This study investigates how positive and negative politeness strategies are utilized in legislative members’ discourse in Medan, Indonesia. This study employed qualitative approach through content analysis method. The utterances taken from Golongan Karya party faction view in regular meeting done by members of House of Representatives of Medan on July 2019 were used as the data. The data were recorded and transcribed before being analyzed. The results exhibit that positive politeness strategy becomes the dominant one totaling to 19 occurrences compared to negative politeness realization totaling to 13 occurrences. Positive politeness is expressed through the use of strategy 4, 11, and 12. Conversely, negative politeness is expressed through four strategies including strategy 1, 3, 5, and 6. The function of positive politeness strategies is to maintain the speaker’s honor and to satisfy the reader. On the contrary, the application of negative politeness strategy is to keep and tease the audience or the hearer.