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CHAPTER II
LITERATURE REVIEW
A. Pragmatics
1. Definition of Pragmatics
Pragmatics is a branch of linguistics that focuses on the meaning of
utterances. According to Levinson (1983:24) pragmatics is the study of the relation
between language and context that are basic to an account of language understanding.
Levinson also states that pragmatics is the study of the role of context which plays in
speaker of utterance in meaning (1983:24). Meanwhile, Leech point out that
pragmatics is the study of meaning in relation to speech situation (1983: 6). It means
that pragmatics is concerned with the meaning of utterance, in which the meaning
depends on the situation where the utterance occurs.
With different term, Thomas (1995:22) defines pragmatics as speaker
meaning in interaction since it puts the focus on the speaker intention. In addition, it
focuses on the producer of the message, which involves the process of interpreting by
the hearer.
Meanwhile, Yule (1996a:3) divides four areas in which pragmatics are
concerned. Firstly, pragmatics is “the study of the meaning”. It means that pragmatics
concerns to what the speakers communicate and whether the hearers can interpret the
utterance of the speakers. Secondly, pragmatics is “the study of contextual meaning”.
It means that pragmatics requires the consideration of how the speakers organize
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what they want to say in accordance with whom, where, when, and under what
circumstance they are talking. Next, pragmatics is “study of how to get
communication than what is said”. It means that pragmatics is dealing with
investigation of invisible meaning or what is unsaid by the speaker. Lastly,
pragmatics is “the study of the expression of relative distance”. The speaker tends to
consider how close or distant the listener is so that the speaker is able to determine
how much needs to be said. Yule also states that the advantage of studying language
via pragmatics is that one can talk about people‟s intended meanings, their
assumptions, their purposes or goals, and the kinds of actions that they performing
when they speak (1996a:4).
From those definitions, it can be concluded that pragmatics is one of the
linguistics branches, which focuses on the meaning of utterances in which the context
influence the intended meaning whenever the conversation occurs.
2. Context
In understanding and interpreting the meaning of an utterance, one must not
ignore the context or situation surrounding. Levinson (1983: 24) points out the
importance of context. Here the language users must pair the sentences with the
context, in which they would be appropriate. Therefore the sentences should be
appropriate to the context. Leech (1983: 13) considers that context as the relevant
aspect of the physical or social setting of utterance. It is a background knowledge
assumed to be shared by speaker and hearer.
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Meanwhile, Malinowsky (Halliday and Hasan, 1985: 7) suggests two kinds of
context. First is the context of situation and second is the context of culture. The
context of situation is the context in which the speech is uttered. It is an environment
of text, which includes participants people involved in speech, time, place, social
environment, etc. The context of culture is the context background or history behind
the participants. It covers norm, rule, tradition, belief, etc.
The other definition about context, Holmes (1992: 12) explains about the
helpful ways to reveal such a context in any situation linguistic choices.
- The participants: The participants are the speakers as addresser and their
interlocutors as addressee.
- The setting or social context of interaction: It means where the background
while the participants have a conversation is. It can be place, date, time and
situation at that time.
- The topic: The topic shows what are the speakers and their interlocutors talking
about.
- The function: The function describes the purpose of the conversation. It reveals
why they have such of that conversation.
There are four components that useful to strengthen the context in terms of
social dimensions (Holmes, 1992: 12), they are:
a. The Solidarity (social distance scale)
Based on Holmes (1992: 13), this scale is used to emphasize on how intimate
the relation between the participants (the speaker and the hearer) while they do a
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conversation. This social distance is the factor which influences the speaker
consideration to use the particular language strategy towards the hearer. Language
choice is closely related to its factor, based on Holmes (1992:4), she stated that
language final choice reflects three factors, such as: the relationship between the
participants and the intimacy between them.
For instance, the choice of strategy in politeness is due to the social distance
scale. Though it is not the stagnant factor, it is the one which affects the use of
politeness. Here, positive politeness and negative politeness strategy have different
factors that affect the choice of the strategy. When the speakers use positive
politeness, it can be said that the speakers and their interlocutors are in a close
distance. It is because the speakers want to show solidarity to their interlocutors.
While for negative politeness, the speakers tend to have a less distance with the
interlocutors if it is compared to the positive politeness. The speakers who choose
negative politeness just want to fulfil the hearer‟s face wants. Thus, the speakers can
save their own face. (Brown and Levinson, 1987)
Intimate Distant
High solidarity Low solidarity
Figure 2.1. The solidarity-social distance scale
Taken from Holmes (1992: 12)
b. The Status Scale
This scale is used to show the people‟s status or power when they
communicate to each other. There are a lot of factors which affect this scale towards
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the language choice, for example the status differences upon the gender, the degree of
education, the economic status, job status and others. For example, a boss who has
superior status than his staff has right to command the staff with the direct strategy
without any redress because he has a higher job status in the workplace, or it means
he has power over the others. The variation chosen by the speaker is based on the
status of superior or subordinate.
Superior High Status
Subordinate Low status
Figure 2.2 The status scale
Taken from Holmes (1992: 13)
c. The Formality Scale
According to Holmes (1992: 13), this scale is “useful in assessing the
influence of the social setting or type of interaction language choice”. It means that in
different context and setting, people will speak differently because both of two factors
above affect the choice of the strategy also. For example, even two persons have an
intimate social relation, but when they are on a meeting with other co-workers, they
should choose the language which is proper with a formal situation to express their
opinion. However, when they are not in the meeting, they can use informal language
outside.
Formal High Formality
Informal Low Formality
Figure 2.3 The formality scale
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d. The Function Scales
Based on Holmes (1992: 14), there are factors which affect the differences of
language use: Referential and Affective function scale. This scale is used to measure
the information and the feeling which is expressed by the speaker. It can be said that,
the more speaker utters information towards the hearer, the less feeling the speaker
has to maintain the relationship. Here, Referential function is when the speaker gives
information to the hearer while Affective function is when the speaker has a good
willingness to create a good relationship towards his/her interlocutor, even there is no
important information. It can be said that both of the factors are contradictory.
Referential
High Low
information information
content content
Affective
Low High
Affective affective
content content
Figure 2.4 The referential and affective function scale
Taken from Holmes (1992: 14)
In conclusion, context has played a very important role, and it has also given
many contributions either in spoken or written language. By concerning the context,
speakers and hearers can understand the meaning of pragmatics utterance in
conversation so that they will not misinterpret the intended meaning.
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3. Speech Acts
3.1 The Definition of Speech Acts
Yule (1996a:48) states that any occasion, the action performed by producing
an utterance will consist of three related acts; they are locutionary act, illocutionary
act, and perlocutionary act.
a. Locutionary act : the basic act of utterance or producing a meaningful
linguistic expression. It is an act of saying something that contains the speaker‟s
verbalized message.
b. Illocutionary act : it indicates the speaker‟s purpose in saying something. It
means the force behind the words. It specifies in what way a speaker is using the
locution.
c. Perlocutionary act : a simple utterance has a function to bring the effect from
that utterance. It is what a person does as the response of what we intend.
The example below will give a clear understanding about these acts above.
A: It is dark in this room. Can you turn on the lamp?
B: I will turn on the lamp
The act of saying “it is dark in this room” and “can you turn on the lamp?” is
the locutionary act. Then the illocutionary act is that A requests B. Finally, the
acceptance of the request by turning on the lamp is the perlocutionary act.
3.2 Direct and Indirect Speech Acts
According to Yule (1996) speech acts divided into two types, namely direct
speech act and indirect speech act.
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a. Direct speech act
Direct speech act occurs when there is a direct relationship between a
structure and function. There are three structure forms (declaratives, interrogative,
imperative) and the three general communicative functions (statement, question,
command).
b. Indirect speech act
Indirect speech act occurs when there is an indirect relationship between a
structure and function. For example, a declarative and an interrogative are used to
make commands in an indirect speech act.
3.3 The classification of Speech Acts
According to Searle (in Levinson, 1983) speech acts are divided into five
types of utterances based on its purposes, they are:
a. Declarations : kinds of speech acts that make a speaker declare something to
the hearer. For example: President : I declare war to England
b. Representative : kind of speech acts that states what the speaker what the
speaker believes to be the case or not. Acts of asserting, describing, concluding and
making a statement are the examples of the speaker‟s intention in uttering his/her
belief. For example: “The earth is round”
c. Directives : kind of speech acts which attempts by the speaker to get the
addressee to do something. Directive covers commands, orders, requests, and
questions. For example: “Open the window, please!”
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d. Commisives : kind of speech acts which commit the speaker to some future
course of action. Commisive includes promises, threats, and refusals. For example:
“I‟ll be back”
e. Expressives : kind of speech acts which the word state what the speaker feels,
such as apologizing, praising, congratulating, deploring, and regretting. For example:
“I‟m sorry”
4. Speech Acts of Suggestion
4.1 Definition of Suggestion
Suggestion is an advice given to the hearer who has done something wrong to
make such fault not repeated again in the future. Suggestion is like request but
suggestion is not too strong like request and the power of necessity nuance is weaker
than request. Suggestion mostly uses „you should‟, „you can‟, „you need‟, „you
would‟, „you will‟, and often suggestion made softly and indirectly. The example is
you should find someone who is more knowledgeable in that area (Juwari, 2014: 21).
Verb „suggest‟ is closely similar to „advice‟ and „recommend‟ in English
language. Even in the researches on speech act have been conducted before, the term
“suggestion” and “advice acts” have been employed interchangeably to refer to the
same speech act (Searle, 1969; Wardhaugh, 1985; Wierbicks, 1987; Banerjee and
Carrell, 1988; Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford, 1993, 1996; Tsui, 1994; Koike, 1996;
Hinkel, 1997; Mandala, 1999; Matsumura, 2001, 2003) as cited in Martinez-Flor
(2005).
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According to Vanderveken (1991) (in Borderia-Garcia, 2006) states the „to
suggest‟ can have two illocutionary forces, an assertive force and a directive force. In
its directive use, the one of interest to this research, „suggest‟ makes weak attempt to
get the hearer to do something (Vanderveken in Juwari, 2014: 23). Vanderveken
(1991) in Juwari (2014: 23) says that “to advise is to suggest that a hearer do
something with the special preparatory conditions that this good for him or her,
whereas “to recommend is to advise with the additional preparatory condition than
the prepositional content is good in general (and not only for the hearer)”. From their
definition, he (1991) proposed that recommending entails advising, act advising
includes suggesting. Vanderveken (1991) in Juwari (2014: 23) concludes that
recommendation and advice are under the umbrella from suggestion. Therefore, in
this study sometimes the researcher uses „recommendation‟, „advice‟ and
„suggestion‟ interchangeably.
As directive speech act, act of suggesting belongs to a face-threatening act
since the speaker in some way impose the hearer to concern what the latter should do
although the speaker‟s intention do not hinder hearer‟s freedom of action. Face
threatening act means that if a speaker says something that represents a threat to
another individual‟s expectation regarding self-image, which refers to that emotional
and social sense of self that everyone has and expects everyone else to recognize
(Yule, 1996a: 61). Brown and Levinson (1987) cited in (Jiang, 2006: 46) said that
although people who make suggestions often have good intentions, suggestions are to
some extent face-threatening.
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Giving suggestion can be employed both in direct and indirect way. As in the
theory of directness, direct speech act means if there is direct relationship between a
structure and a function, while indirect speech act means there is indirect relationship
between a structure and function (Yule, 1996a: 44-45). Direct suggestions are
suggestions that are explicitly conveyed. Banerjee and Carrell (1987) as cited in Liu
and Zhao (2007: 64) defined direct suggestions as “those including the desired
action”. The structures used in direct suggestions can functionally and explicitly be
regarded as suggestion, as Vanderveken (1991) in Juwari (2014: 24) said, makes a
weak attempt to get the hearer to do something. In other hand, indirect suggestions
mean those whose structures function and explicitly cannot be regarded as
suggestions. There is no relationship between structures used and function of
suggestion. Banerjee and Carrell (1987) as cited (Liu and Zhao, 2007: 64) declared
that indirect suggestions are those that do have desired action
On the previous studies by experts, there are several classifications containing
the strategy of making suggestion. From the exploration, the writer found the
classification in Martinez-Flor (2005), Jiang (2006), Liu and Zhao (2007), and Bu
(2011) study. This study uses the classification of suggestion found in Liu and Zhao
(2007). Actually they borrowed Jiang‟s classification (2006: 42) and added the want-
structure as direct speech as an additional category. Liu and Zhao (2007) also
differential modals with direct addressee “you” as the agent from modals with agents
other than the direct addressee “you” because “the former structure is more direct and
imposing than the latter” (p.42).
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4.2 Classification of Suggestion
Bellow is the classification of suggestion by Liu and Zhao (2007: 64-65)
Table 2.1 Classification of Suggestion from Liu and Zhao (2007)
No. Category Structure
1. Direct Suggestion Modals with you
2. Performatives
3. Pseudo cleft structure
4. Imperatives
5. Want-structures
1. Indirect Suggestion Modals with agents other than you
2. Wh-questions
3. Conditionals
4. Yes-no questions
4.2.1 Direct Suggestions
a. Modals with you
Suggestions in forms of “Modals with you” are suggestions that use modals or
semi-modal as, Banerjee and Carell (1985) named, “the illocutionary force indicator”
of suggesting force. This kind of form includes direct suggestions because the
suggestion reveals the agent given suggestion or recommendation.
Banerjee and Carell (1988) in Martinez-Flor (2005) said that the use of
modals in making suggestion is not direct as imperatives and performatives. Celce-
Murcia and Larsen-Freeman (1999) in Jiang (2006) observed that speakers use
modals to perform a variety of social functions, one of them is to give suggestion.
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The author (1999) ordered modals based on the speaker‟s degree of authority or the
urgency of the advice. Like in the following three examples: (1) You must see a
doctor, (2) You should / ought to see a doctor, (3) You might / could see a doctor,
show the decrease in speaker‟s authority or urgency of the message (Jiang).
Each modal has different imposing power in their usage in suggestion. As
explained before, speaker‟s authority and urgency of the message cause different
imposing power among the modals. It is clear that “must” and “have to” are the most
imposing modals since they have necessity power, higher than “should” and “ought
to” which have obligation power. Frank (1972) in Juwari (2014) said that “must” and
“have to” suggest more urgent course of action which does not allow for the
possibility of rejection, while statement with “should” and “ought to” suggest actions
which may possibly not be acted upon.
b. Performatives
Explicit performatives are associated with the performance of direct speech
acts, for example by saying “I suggest that you …” or “I advise you to …” in order to
perform the act of advising (Searle, 1969). Suggestion in form of performatives can
be characterized by the use of performative verbs and the use of noun. Regarding the
use of performative verbs, such as “I suggest that you change the date of the exam”,
several authors (Wardhaugh, 1985; Koike, 1994; Tsui, 1994; Koester, 2002) as cited
in Martinez-Flor (2005) have argued that this formula is not widely employed in
everyday life since it is regarded as very direct. Tsui (1994) (in Martinez-Flor, 2005)
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also considers the use of the noun to be a very direct suggestion, as in the example
“My suggestion to you is to get into that”.
c. Pseudo-cleft structure
Pseudo-cleft structure is a form of suggestion which is characterized by a cleft
or What-cleft, as in “What you need to do is …” or “What I would suggest is …”
which function is emphasizing and drawing the hearer‟s attention to the most
important part of a suggestion (Jiang, 2006). Celce-Marcia and Larsen-Freeman
(1999) as cited in (Jiang, 2006) refer to Wh-clefts as important focus constructions
that give special emphasis to the constituent following some forms of the verb be.
There are some related structures regarded as this kind of form to make suggestion.
Jiang (2006) proposed some related structures included in the type of Pseudo-cleft
structures, which are:
a. What … is …
b. All … is …
c. One thing you could do is …
d. Another thing to keep in mind is …
e. One of the most important things to remember is...
d. Imperatives
Suggestion in the form of “imperative” is regarded as the most direct and
impolite forms of making a suggestion (Edmonson and House 1981; Koike 1994;
Hinkel 1997) as quoted in Martinez-Flor (2005: 174) because they have the most
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literal pragmatic force, like in “consider those theories for your paper” or “Don‟t use
this book”.
e. Want-structures
Want-structures express very strong obligation and they can be more assertive
than imperatives (Liu and Zhao, 2007). This structure can be employed by using I
(the speaker) or you (the hearer) as the agent. Liu and Zhao (2007) gave example
“You want to have a paragraph just talk about one poem, its theme …” which uses
“you” as the agent and “I want you to do something” using “I” as the agent. Using
agent “you” in want-strucures sounds much less assertive as it acts an option for the
hearer, while using “I” expresses a strong request and gives the hearer no other
options (Liu and Zhao, 2007).
4.2.2. Indirect Suggestions
a. Modals with agents other than you
Modals with agents other than you is like modals with you explained
previously which is form of suggestion used modals as “the illocutionary force
indicator” in suggesting. The different is that modal with agents other than you
suggestion do not include into direct suggestion group because in this form there is no
agent (individual, people, institution, etc) directly given a suggestion
recommendation. There are some strategies to formulate this form like (1) passive,
(2) using other agent and (3) using “we” as the subject of sentences (Liu and Zhao,
2007).
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b. Wh-questions
Wh-questions are as “What about / How about …?” and “Why don‟t you … /
Why not …?”. Jiang (2006) said that they seem to have acquired idiomatic status for
indirect suggestions. Although “Why don‟t you …?” appears acceptable. Banerjee
and Carrel (1988) as cited in (Jiang, 2006) argue that “it is probably less polite in that
in presupposes that the hearer knows that he or she should perform the desired action
and asks for the reason that the hearer has not. Moreover, it “… the hearer with few
options”, and as a result, “does not help to lessen the threat to the hearer‟s face”.
c. Conditionals
Conditional is a form of suggestion whose structures follow conditional
sentences. Jiang (2006) in his appendix mentioned two forms from which conditional
can be employed. Those are “if (I) were … and if (you) …”
d. Yes-no questions
Suggestion in the form of “Yes-no questions” is like “Have you thought of
about …? Would you consider …? (Jiang, 2006). Their structures require yes-no
answer.
5. Politeness Strategies
Politeness is a system interpersonal relation designed to facilitate interaction by
human interaction by minimizing potential conflict and confrontation inherent in all
human interchanges (Yule: 1996). Meanwhile, Holmes (1992) states that a polite
makes the other person comfort when he is making a conversation.
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When we discuss about politeness, we deal with “face”. Face means a person‟s
public self-image. It refers to that emotional and social sense of a person, so that
every person has experts everyone else to recognize (Yule: 1996).
In order to reduce the possibility of damage another‟s face one may employ a
particular strategy. There are four strategies proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987),
namely bald-on record, positive politeness, negative politeness, and off-record
strategy.
5.1 Bald on-record
These provide no effort to reduce the impact of the FTA‟s. It will most likely
to shock the hearer, embarrass them, or make them feel a bit uncomfortable.
However, this strategy is commonly found with people who know each other very
well, and are very comfortable in their environment, such as intimate friends and
family. The bald on record may be followed by mitigating devices to soften the
demand, such as “please” and “would you”.
An emergency: Help!
Task oriented or command: Give me that!
Request: Put your coat away please. Or put your coat away, would you.
Alerting or warning: Turn your headlights on! (When alerting someone to
something they should be doing)
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5.2 Positive Politeness
It is usually seen in groups of friends, or where people in the given social
situation know each other fairly well. It usually tries to minimize the distance
between them by expressing friendliness and solid interest in the hearer‟s need to be
respected (minimize the FTA)
Attend to the hearer: “You must be hungry; it‟s a long time since breakfast. How
about some lunch?”
Avoid disagreement
A : “What is she, small?”
B : “Yes, yes, she‟s small, smallish, um, not really small but certainly not very
big”
Assume agreement: “So when are you coming to see us?”
Hedge opinion: “You really should sort of try harder”.
5.3 Negative Politeness
The main focus for using this strategy is to assume that the speaker may be
imposing on the hearer, and intruding on their space. Therefore, these automatically
assume that there might be some social distance or awkwardness in the situation.
Be indirect: “I‟m looking for a comb”. In this situation by using this indirect
strategy, speaker hopes that the hearer will offer to go find one for him.
Forgiveness: “You must forgive me that ...”
Minimize imposition: “I just want to ask you if I could use your computer?”
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Pluralize the person responsible: “We forgot to tell you that you needed to buy
your plane ticket by yesterday”. This takes all responsibility off the speaker by
changing into “we”
5.4 Off-record
The speakers are removing themselves from any imposition whatsoever.
Give hints: “It‟s cold in here”
Be vague: “Perhaps someone should have been more responsible”
Be sarcastic, or joking: “Yeah, he‟s a real rocket scientist!”
6. Factor Influencing the Choice the Strategy
Besides finding the type of politeness strategy, this research also discusses the
factors of executing suggesting expression in conversations. According to Thomas
(1995:124), there are three factors which influence the use of politeness in
conversation
a. The relative power of the speaker over the hearer
People tend to speak more politely when they have conversation with a person
who has higher power. It difference when a person speaks to someone who has equal
power or has less power.
According to Spencer-Oatey (1992) in (Thomas 1995:126), power can be
divided into three types, which are legitimate power, referent power, and expert
power. Legitimate power is someone has power because of his role, age or status.
Next, referent power refers to someone has power because the other admires and
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wants to be like him/her in some respect. The last, expert power means someone has
some special knowledge or expertise which the other person needs.
b. The social distance between the speaker and the hearer
It refers to the relation between the speaker and the hearer of conversation
because of their closeness influencing the way they choose words to utter. Social
distance is divided into two categories, namely close relationship (i.e. family
members, intimate friend) and close relationship (i.e. the strangers)
c. Size of imposition
It means the importance or degree of difficulty in the situation. High rank of
imposition tends to require more polite while low of imposition tend to require less
polite.
B. Review of Related Studies
Pishghadam and Sharafadini (2011) analyzes delving into speech act of
suggestion: a case of Iranian EFL learners. They focused on how EFL learners utilize
suggestion speech act. They found that discrepancy in three types of suggestion
samples between natives and non-natives, gender and language proficiency were
found to play a significant role in the production of suggestion strategies and the
result of the research were discussed in the context of language learning and teaching.
Liu and Zhao (2007) analyzes whether highly L2 speakers realize the speech
act of suggestion in the same way as native speakers and the reasons behind their
pragmatic choices. They compared suggestions provided by three non-native
speaking English Composition instructors and three native speaking Composition
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instructors when they hold conferences with their American students. They borrowed
Jiang‟s classification of suggesting expression and they also added the want-structure
as direct speech. They found that the non-native speaking instructors were more
direct than the native speaking instructors.
Jiang (2006) analyzes the linguistic forms used to perform the speech act of
suggestions in both real language and ESL textbooks. He compared suggestions in
two authentic settings, professor-student interaction during office hours and student-
student study groups, and six popular ESL textbooks, three old and three recent. He
found that register differences between office hours and study group demonstrate the
contextual of certain linguistic forms and complexity of forming speech act. The new
generation textbooks are more linguistic structures for suggestions than the old
generation textbooks. He classified of suggestion structures into nine categories based
on grammatical features which are let‟s, modals and semi modals, wh-questions,
conditionals, performatives, pseudo-cleft structures, extraposed to-clauses, yes-no
questions, and imperatives.
Juwari (2014) examines suggesting expressions in the editorial of Jakarta Post
Newspaper. The research describes the kind of the structures of direct and indirect
suggestion used in the editorial. He also describes the dominant of the structure of
suggestion used in the editorial. He used Liu and Zhao‟s classification of suggesting
expression. However, this study is not analyzed using politeness strategies on
suggesting expression.
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C. Synopsis of Film The Bank Job
The Bank Job is a film published in 2008 by Mosaic Media Group. This film
tells about a bank robbery by Terry and friends in Baker Street, London. The
complete story of The Bank Job is written below which is taken from
www.imdb.com.
Petty-criminal-gone-straight Terry Leather (Jason Statham) owns a failing
car-sales garage and feels harassed by two debt-collectors. His friend, the
photographer Kevin Swain's (Stephen Campbell Moore) ex-girlfriend, a former
model named Martine Love (Saffron Burrows) offers Terry a chance to earn enough
money to never worry about debt again: a bank robbery in Baker Street, London.
Leather gathers his petty-criminal friends, including Swain, a pornographic actor
Dave Shilling (Daniel Mays), a Cypriot mechanic named Bambas (Alki David), and
an elegant con-man "Major" Guy Singer (James Faulkner). While scouting out the
bank, Leather and Love enter and inspect the vault while Shilling poses for
photographs by Swain. The gangster Lew Vogel (David Suchet), who keeps records
of his pay-offs to police at Lloyds bank, happens upon Shilling and Swain.
They lease a shop named Le Sac two lots away from the bank and dig a tunnel
under The Chicken Inn fast-food restaurant to reach the underground bank vault.
Terry employs Eddie Burton (Michael Jibson), one of his garage workers, as a
"watchman" with a walkie-talkie to sit on a roof to keep look-out. Martine, once
caught smuggling heroin into Britain and wanting to avoid jail, set them up for this
job on behalf of MI5, which desires the contents of a certain safe deposit box, No.
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118. This box contains sensual and compromising photos of a member of the British
Royal Family (in the film, Princess Margaret). The photos and box belong to a black
militant gangster who calls himself Michael X (Peter de Jersey); he uses the photos to
avoid trouble with the Metropolitan Police, and MI5 is charged with keeping the
photos out of circulation.
As Terry's crew digs, the radio chatter draws the attention of a local amateur
radio operator, who overhears the conversation and realizes a robbery is in progress.
He calls the police, who begin to search their ten-mile radius and listen for concrete
details to pin the robbery down. Terry's crew breaks through and loot the vault, as
Martine goes for the photo deposit-box. A suspicious Terry opens it with her and,
upon seeing the pictures, realizes Martine's hidden agenda. Among the photos are
many of high-ranking government officials, including a senior MP, in compromising
positions in a local S&M brothel. The robbers take these with money and other
valuables. Terry arranges for alternate transportation "to be safe", throwing off MI5
who had intended to intercept them. Guy and Bambas escape with their share and
Terry confronts Martine over the photos, who explain the unfolding predicament. The
robbery discovered, the police corrupt ones receiving payoffs and honest ones began
an investigation while MI5 continues their search. Also joining the search for Terry's
crew is Lew Vogel, an organized crime figure worried about the contents of his
ledger, which lists payoffs he made to police, which was stolen in the robbery. He
informs Michael X that the royal 'portraits' had gone missing and Michael X becomes
suspicious of Gale Benson (Hattie Morahan), a British spy who loves his American
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colleague Black Power militant, Hakim Jamal (Colin Salmon), and has travelled with
him and Jamal to Trinidad.
Remembering the encounter with Shilling outside of the bank before the
robbery, Vogel has him tortured for information with a sandblaster. Shilling breaks
and Vogel goes to Terry's garage and kidnaps Eddie, the lookout. Meanwhile, a
senior minister in the government, Lord Drysdale, is shown photos of him in the
brothel run by Sonia Bern (Sharon Maughan) and agrees to help absolve the robbers
and secure them safe passage. Meanwhile, MI5 issues a D-Notice forbidding press
reports. Police simultaneously release recordings of the walkie-talkie conversations in
the hope that someone will recognize the voices. These recordings are heard on the
radio by Terry's family. Vogel's accomplice, corrupt Detective Gerald Pyke (Don
Gallagher), shoots Dave and threatens to shoot Eddie unless Vogel gets his ledger
back. Vogel agrees with Terry to meet him at Paddington Station in London. During
this time, Guy and Bambas are murdered by persons unknown, and Michael X has
Benson killed in Trinidad by an associates. Terry and Kevin give the same instruction
to Detective Sergeant Roy Given (Gerard Horan), the officer in charge of the
investigation, citing knowledge of corrupt officers under Vogel's control. Terry
convinces Vogel to go to Paddington Station at the same time, offering him the ledger
in return for Eddie's safe return.
Terry heads to the rendezvous while Martine meets up with Tim Everett
(Richard Lintern), her original contact in MI5, on a bridge overlooking the scene.
Vogel and his corrupt police arrive with the mechanic, but recognize the MI5 agents
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and run. The deputy head of MI5 (with Lord Mountbatten) hands over the passports
Terry bargained for, in return for the photos of the princess. Terry then chases Vogel
and in a fight knocks out Vogel and his thugs, including corrupt Detective Nick
Barton (Craig Fairbrass). Detective Given, officer in charge of the investigation,
arrives to see the robbers arrested. He speaks with the MI5 officers present, who
direct police to let the robbers go. Terry gives the ledger to the police officer before
him, Kevin, and Eddie leave the scene. Vogel and the corrupt officers are arrested
instead. Everett personally supervises Michael X's arrest in Trinidad and Tobago and
has Benson's remains exhumed for reburial in Britain. The final scenes have Terry
and Martine saying good-bye, and Terry and his family enjoying a relaxed and
carefree life on a small motor yacht of their own, off a sunny beach.
The epilogue states that the revelations about the brothel forced many
government officials to resign. Scotland Yard begins investigating the corrupt
officers named in the ledger. Michael X was hanged in 1975 for Benson's murder and
his personal files are kept hidden in the British National Archives until 2054. Vogel is
imprisoned for eight years for crimes that were unrelated to the robbery. The
murderers of Guy and Bambas have never been found. About 4 million worth of
materials and money were stolen from the robbery. At least 100 safety-deposit box
owners did not claim insurance nor identify the items in the boxes.