This research was executed to analyze the kinds of politeness strategies employed by male and female through command expression in the workplace. It was also conducted to describe how commands are delivered by the characters in The Newsroom: Season 1, Episodes 1-10. Furthermore, it was carried out to know why male and female characters deliver command expressions differently.
This research is based on a Pragmatics approach, focusing on commands expression as the data. This research applies descriptive qualitative research. The thesis employs purposive sampling techniques, using as data all of the dialogues containing command expressions between male and female characters in the workplace. There are thirty-one dialogues chosen as the data and classified into four strategies from Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory.
There are three key findings in the thesis. First, three of the four politeness strategies considered are employed in the command expressions in the data. They are Bald On-Record, Positive Politeness and Off-record, without Negative Politeness. The characters mostly use Bald On-Record to express commands. Furthermore most of the characters that use Bald On-Record strategy are male: sixteen males use it compared to only nine females.
Second, the thesis shows that male and female characters differ in the way they deliver command expressions. Male characters tend to use more mitigating devices and politeness markers. On the other hand, female characters tend to use more non-verbal actions, such as falling intonation to make command expressions sound assertive.
Finally, the last finding shows that the gender of the command speaker influences the choice of politeness strategy. Male characters apply more polite strategies than female do. On the other hand, female characters tend to be more assertive because they employ less mitigating device and use more falling intonation.
Keywords: command expressions, speech acts, politeness, gender, workplace, TV-Series