ABSTRAK
The research is conducted to describe the politeness strategies used by the Black and White people on The Help novel in delivering a command. It is also conducted to identify the reasons and the factors which influence the characters in delivering the command expressions using certain politeness strategies on The Help novel. The research uses Pragmatics as an approach which concerns on the command expressions as the data. This research employs descriptive qualitative research. This research applies purposive sampling technique in order to take all the data of conversations containing the command expressions which are delivered by Black and White people. There are twenty three conversations chosen as the data and classified into four strategies of Brown Levinson’s politeness strategy theory (1987). There are two findings in this research. First, three kinds of politeness strategies are used by the characters to deliver the command expressions in the data. They are Bald on Record, Negative Politeness, and Off Record. There are fifteen data employed by White people and five data employed by Black people to deliver the commands using Bald on Record. Two data employ Negative Politeness strategy are delivered by White people. Then, there is one datum using Off Record strategy employed by White people. Finally, the last finding shows that two reasons which influence White and Black people in delivering commands are the situation when the characters deliver the commands and the relationship between Black and White people. Furthermore, there are three factors influence the characters in using certain politeness strategies. Those are the social distance, the relative power, and the rank of imposition. Keywords: command expression, speech act, politeness strategy
