Politeness strategies in giving and responding to compliments: a socio-pragmatics study of compliments in “the devil wears prada”

Oleh :
Ike Rahmaniati Rahayu - C0302036 - Fak. Sastra dan Seni Rupa

ABSTRACT This research was conducted to discover the way the characters employ compliment also compliment responses and the politeness strategies employed by the characters in giving and responding to compliment in the movie entitled “The Devil Wears Prada”. Five major theories mainly used are Holmes’s Social Dimension’s of Communication, Hymes’ SPEAKING theory, Chaika’s theory of kinesics, and Herbert’s theory of compliment responses, and Brown and Levinson’s theory of politeness strategies. This research applies a socio-pragmatic approach as the way of analysis. This research is arranged using a descriptive qualitative method. All the dialogs containing compliment and compliment responses were taken as data. The results of the analysis can be seen as follows: First, the compliments delivered by characters come along with combination of non-verbal acts. The addressees respond to compliments in various ways. Four types of compliment responses were delivered by the characters. The responses are appreciation token, scale down, question, and disagreement. The characters respond to the compliment with a combination of verbal and non-verbal acts or only non-verbal acts. Second, all characters employ positive politeness in delivering compliments. In responding compliment, the characters employ different strategies. The strategies are positive politeness, negative politeness, and saying nothing or do not do FTA.