Abstract

This study reports on politeness in directive speech acts appearing within the proceedings of the local parliament for Sukoharjo, Indonesia. The aim is to explain the politeness strategies used to convey intended persuasive forces during parliamentary discourses. Drawing upon the pragmatic qualitative approach, this study examined 18 parliamentarians and data on their previous utterances’ form, function, meaning, and context in the proceedings. Using data collected through observation, records, and documentation, it looks at how the politicians acted. The results show that directive acts represent the main performance, with 154 tokens of illocution and 44 directive speech acts for politeness. Politeness strategies to perform directive speech acts are colored with on record, positive politeness, and aversion-to-acting negative politeness. The characters for positive politeness include inviting-gentle-direct, repressing-gentle-direct, suggesting-gentle-indirect, repressing-gentle-indirect, gentle-indirect, and respecting direct. This study implies pragmatic analysis in a different setting where an emphasized degree of formality is required. Suggestions are made to compare or contrast with utterances in less formal interactions, such as in the negotiations between a buyer and seller, and in religious circumstances like sermons in a mosque, church, or colloquial proceedings.

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