Refusals in the film entitled “In Her Shoes” (a socio-pragmatics approach)

Oleh :
Rosita Asparaningrum - C1306528 - Fak. Sastra dan Seni Rupa

ABSTRACT ROSITA ASPARANINGRUM. C1306528. 2008. Refusals in the Film Entitled “In Her Shoes” (A Socio-Pragmatics Approach). Thesis. English Department, Faculty of Letters and Fine Arts, Sebelas Maret University. This research is conducted to describe the strategies of refusing invitation, request, offer, suggestion, etc used by the characters in the film entitled In her Shoes. This is also carried out to explain how the refusal strategies are performed by the characters and to describe why the strategies of refusal are applied by the characters in the film entitled In Her Shoes. This research uses socio-pragmatics approach. It employs descriptive qualitative method. The sampling technique applied in this research is purposive sampling technique. All of utterances containing refusal in the film In Her Shoes are taken and analyzed. The findings of the research show that there are eleven strategies of refusal, namely: be silent, hesitate, show lack of enthusiasm; offer an alternative; postponement (delaying answer); put the blame on a third party or something over which you have no control; avoidance; divert and distract the addressee; general acceptance with excuse; say what’s offered is inappropriate; refusal with giving reason; refusal without giving reason; and refusal with thanking. Refusals uttered by the characters in the film In Her Shoes are performed directly and indirectly. The indirect refusal is usually more polite than the direct one. There are factors influencing the characters to use indirect refusals. The factors are the relative power of the speaker over the hearer, the social distance between the speaker and the hearer, and relative rights and obligations between the speaker and the hearer. There are reasons why each strategy in uttering refusal is applied by the characters in the film In Her Shoes. The use of indirect refusals has functions to make one’s language more/less interesting, to increase the force of one’s message, competing goals, and politeness/regard for “face”. While the direct strategy is applied since the speaker wants to convey the meaning of what he/she says explicitly. Therefore, the hearer understands and interprets the speaker means easily.