ABSTRACT
This research is aimed to find out the refusal expression employed by the
characters in the American-TV Series Entitled Royal Pains: Season 1, Episode 1-
6. It is also to describe the politeness strategy employed by the characters and to
explain the factors of chossing certain strategy in expressing refusal.
This research uses pragmatics approach. It is a descriptive qualitative
research which applies purposive sampling technique in taking the data. The data
of this research are taken from the dialogues in Royal Pains season 1 Episode 1-
6which contain refusal expression. They are classified by using Beebe, Takahashi,
and Uliss-Weltz’s theory of refusal expression.
The research shows that there are three findings. First, there are three types
of refusal expression used by the characters to express refusal, namely direct
refusal, indirect refusal, and adjunct to refusal. Direct refusal consisting of non
performative statement, namely no and negative willingness/ability; indirect
refusal consisting of excuse, reason, or explanation, statement of alternative,
statement of principle, and statement of regret, and adjunct to refusal consisting of
pause filler.
The second finding reveals that there are four types of politeness strategy
which are employed by the characters to express refusal.They are bald on-record
(be direct), positive politeness (giving reason), negative politeness (questioning,
being pessimistic, apologizing, being conventionally indirect and using hedge),
and off record (giving hints and using contradiction).
The last findings shows that the use of certain strategy is influenced by
the factors of relative power, namely legitimate power and expert power, and
social distance. The speaker who has legitimate power and expert power tends to
express refusal directly. Moreover, the speaker who has close relationship to the
hearer will also be influenced to employ direct refusal expression by operating
bald on record strategy.
