Politeness Strategies in the Bel Ami Movie

Abstract

This undergraduate thesis examines a movie entitled “Bel Ami”. It focuses on the politeness strategies used in the dialogues that involve George as the main character. The objectives of this paper are to identify and classify the politeness strategies that appear and to find the most frequently performed politeness strategies by upper class characters in the movie. The analysis is based on the classification of politeness strategies by Brown and Levinson. The result of the analysis indicates that there are 61 speech acts that contain politeness strategies. The highest number of strategy that is found is positive politeness strategy comprising 28 strategies (45.90%). It is likely because the speakers and hearers have close relationships as colleagues and the dialogues are dominated by common everyday conversations. The most frequently politeness strategies performed by upper class characters is Bald on record strategy 1 that is Cases of non-minimization of the face threat with 5 (16.13%) strategies. It is possibly because as the hearer, George has less power than the speakers who belong to the upper class people.