WEST VISAYAS STATE UNIVERSITY

College of Arts and Sciences

Luna St. La Paz Iloilo City

METHODS OF RESEARCH

The Analysis of Face Threatening Act Strategies Used in Ellen

DeGeneres’ Interview with Selena Gomez
As a Guest Star

A Research Proposal

presented to

DR. CLAUDETTE A. BALURAN

Subject Facilitator

by

PRINCES O. MENDOZA
 WEST VISAYAS STATE UNIVERSITY
College of Arts and Sciences
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Abstract:
The use of politeness strategies is one of the speaking styles which are usually used by
people in order to make the communication process between speaker and listener goes
smoothly. According to Brown and Levinson the politeness strategies themselves are
divided into four, i.e. bald on record, positive politeness, negative politeness, and off
record. This paper was conducted in order to find out what face threatening act
strategies are mostly used by the interviewer or interviewee. The script of interview was
taken from the official website of Ellen DeGeneres. From the whole script of the
interview can be found that there are 10 (ten) utterances use Bald on Record strategy,
16 (sixteen) utterances use Positive Politeness, 7 (seven) utterances use Negative
politeness, and there is no utterance uses Off Record strategy.

Keywords: Politeness strategies, Face Threatening Act, Interview

Introduction

Being polite is a strategy that is commonly used by English speakers. It is

especially appropriate when one is making a request, talking on the telephone or
engaging in a pleasant conversation with someone. Showing courtesy to others or being
polite, on the other hand, often includes behavior that conforms that particular cultural
rules. In English speaking societies courteous behavior may include non-verbal
expressions, such as not standing too close to another person, not staring, opening a
door for someone or yielding in traffic. Another way to be courteous is to speak politely.
Since polite language use is an expression of polite behavior, behavioral and linguistic
elements of politeness are sometimes interchangeable.
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We often speak politely when we are making a request. This doesn’t mean that we are
being manipulative, but rather that we recognize that the person to whom we direct our
request has ‘face’ to maintain and we are trying to avoid any menacing gestures
towards that ‘face’. By ‘face’ we mean a public persona that we all show to others. Even
though this ‘face’ is shown publicly, it represents the image that a person has of himself
or herself. When requesting something we do not want to threaten the other’s person’s
self-image in any way.

Politeness is the way in which the speaker appreciates and maintains the situation of
the hearer in the interaction. According to Brown and Levinson politeness strategies are
developed in order to save the hearers face. Face refers to the respect that an
individual has for him or herself maintaining that self-esteem in public or in private
situations. Face can be divided into two which are positive face and negative face.
Positive face is someone’s willing to be well thought of. Negative face is someone’s
willing not to be imposed on by others and to be allowed to go about our business
unimpeded.

Since being polite is crucial to successful communication with other people,

normally person tries to avoid embarrassing to other person, or make them feel
uncomfortable. To investigate the politeness strategies, Brown and Levinson’s
politeness theory is applied in this paper, since it is the most influential and
comprehensive model of politeness. There are two types of politeness. The first is
positive politeness and the second is negative politeness. Brown and Levinson are also
recognizing what are known as Face Threatening Acts (FTA) and theorize that avoiding
them is the universal goal of polite behavior.

FTA are acts that infringe on the hearer need to maintain his or her self-esteem
and be respected. Some people think that all communicative acts are potentially
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threatening. In fact, the potential does exist to threaten ‘face’ with every act of
communication. Whether the act is actually threat depends not so much on the intent
of the speaker but on the perception of the listener. FTA include acts other than spoken
or written. Being polite or respectful of others goes a long way towards communicating
regardless of your grammatical competency. It seems like communicative competence
is more valuable in today’s global environment than being able to speak technically
perfect. Politeness strategies itself are developed for the main purpose of dealing with
these FTA. When performing an FTA, the speaker does not arbitrarily choose a strategy,
but is restricted by a set of rules. Brown and Levinson list the strategies according to
the degree in which they serve to save face which are baldly on record, positive
politeness, negative politeness, and off-record. So then, in order to distinguish the use
of those strategies, one script form Ellen DeGeneres’ interview with Selena Gomez as
the guest star were used as the data of the analysis.

As everyone know that Ellen DeGeneres is an American comedian, television

host, actress, writer and producer. So, this kind of interview becomes a proper subject
to be analyzed dealing with study of politeness. Since the interview shows the
implementation of politeness strategy and comedy used in asking questions and
responding questions directly between interviewer and interviewee. The purpose of this
study itself is to know what kind of FTA strategies were mostly used in Ellen DeGeneres’
interview with Selena Gomez as guest star.

Research Questions:
1. What levels of politeness strategies does the television host often use?
2. What kind of face-threatening act does the television host often employ in
her speech?
3. How does the television host frame questions in an interview?
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Background and Conceptual Framework of the Study

In their politeness theory, Brown and Levinson work on the assumption that
every member of society has a public self-image or “face”. Their notion of face is based
on Goffman (1967), who defines face as positive social value a person effectively claims
for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact. Face can
thus be likened to a person’s self-esteem. It represents the way a person is perceived
and since it is not a constant value and it continually develops, it has to be attended to
in interaction. Acts that threaten someone’s face are called Face Threatening Acts
(FTA). Although it is in every participant’s interest to avoid FTA in an interaction, it is
not always possible, as some acts are intrinsically FTA and cannot be performed without
posing a threat to either hearer’s or speaker’s face. Even though FTA cannot be
sometimes avoided, there are certain strategies to minimize the threat.

Brown and Levinson list five options a speaker can choose from in case a FTA
should be performed. They also said that politeness is used in order to enter into social
relationships, to acknowledge and show an awareness of the face, the public self-
image, the sense of self, of the people that we address. They said that it is universal
characteristic across cultures that speakers should respect each other’s expectations
regarding self-image, take account of their feelings and avoid FTA.

Brown and Levinson sum up human politeness behavior in four strategies: bald
on record, negative politeness, positive politeness, and off-record-indirect strategy.
1. The bald on-record strategy does nothing to reduce the threat to the hearer's face
and is therefore used in close relationships or when information needs to be shared
quickly.
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2. The positive politeness strategy shows you recognize that your hearer has a
desire to be respected. It also confirms that the relationship is friendly and expresses
group reciprocity.
3. The negative politeness strategy also recognizes the hearer's face. But it also
recognizes that you are in some way imposing on them. Some other examples would be
to say, “I don't want to bother you but...” or “I was wondering if...”

4. Off-record indirect strategy is used to completely remove the speaker from any
potential to impose on the hearer and only alludes to the speaker's idea or specific
request. It takes some of the pressure off of you.

Review of Related Literature

Prior to this, there had been several studies regarding the use of politeness
strategies in talk show or interview. One of them is the thesis compiled by Yusti Yunita
Sari and Sri Mulatsih from Dian Nuswantoro University in 2010 which entitled
“Politeness Strategies Used in the Exclusive Interview between Putra Nababan and
Barack Obama.” On that research, the writer also uses the Politeness Theory from
Brown and Levinson. From the analysis, it can be concluded that the interviewer used
negative politeness more often than other strategies. It because of the deference
among the interviewer and interviewee. So the interviewer decided to use that strategy
to keep his politeness in speaking. Although the focus of the study is quite similar but
the object of the data is different. On the previous research the object is about
interviewing Barack Obama as the President of United State of America, but here is
about interviewing Selena Gomez as the one of the world's best-selling music artists.
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Language or Discourse

Language is a system of conventional spoken, manual, or written symbols by

means of which human beings, as members of a social group and participants in its
culture express themselves (Crystal and Robins, 2003).

As cited by De Valoes (2014), language impacts the daily lives of members of

any race, creed, and region of the world. Language helps express our feelings, desires,
and queries to the world around us. The unique and diverse methods human beings
can use to communicate through written and spoken language is a large part of what
allows harnessing our innate ability to form lasting bonds with one another.
Language is crucial in one’s speech for in a basic sense, this serves as a vehicle
in making another person understand your thoughts, ideas and feelings. From the
actual words that come out of your mouth to the points and topics you articulate,
language is a means of making the person whom you are talking with understand and
agree with what you are saying.

Discourse Analysis
Discourse analysis is a broad term for the study of the ways in which language is
used in texts and contexts, or texts' surrounding and defining discourse. Also called
discourse studies, discourse analysis was developed in the 1970s as a field of study
(Nordquist, 2017).

Oxford English Living Dictionaries, (2018) defined discourse analysis as a method

of analysing the structure of texts or utterances longer than one sentence, taking into
account both their linguistic content and their sociolinguistic context.

Shaw and Bailey (2009) argued that discourse analysis is the study of social life,
understood through analysis of language in its widest sense (including face-to-face talk,
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non-verbal interaction, images, symbols and documents). They also added that it offers
ways of investigating meaning, whether in conversation or in culture. For them,
discourse analytic studies encompass a broad range of theories, topics and analytic
approaches for explaining language in use.

Politeness Theory
The Merriam-Webster dictionary gives multiple definitions for the term polite.
One definition is: "marked by an appearance of consideration, tact, deference, or
courtesy." Although politeness is not a direct synonym for diplomacy and tact, they are
certainly related. Therefore, as this is a study on communicating with diplomacy and
tact, we will pay significant attention to the idea of politeness and cover various
academic approaches to this concept.

Politeness theory accounts for the redressing of affronts to a person's 'face' by

face-threatening acts. The concept of face was derived from Chinese into English in the
19th century. Erving Goffman would then go on to introduce the concept into academia
through his theories of 'face' and 'facework'. Although politeness has been studied in a
variety of cultures for many years, Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson's politeness
theory has become very influential.

Politeness theory explains how and why we protect, promote, and save face
particularly in embarrassing situations. Politeness Theory also suggests that all
individuals are concerned with maintaining a good face. There are two dimensions of
face, negative and positive face. This theory covers five strategies of how people go
about communicating and three things that consider how we treat people differently.

Face-Threatening Acts
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As defined in Face-threatening acts (2016), these are acts which in some way
threaten the 'face' or self-esteem of another person. Some people think that all
communicative acts are potentially threatening. In fact, the potential does exist to
threaten 'face' with every act of communication. Whether the act is actually a threat
depends not so much on the intent of the speaker but on the perception of the listener.

According to Brown and Levinson, positive face and negative face exist
universally in human culture; it has been argued that the notion of face is the actual
universal component to their proposed politeness theory. A face threatening act is an
act that inherently damages the face of the addressee or the speaker by acting in
opposition to the wants and desires of the other. Face threatening acts can be verbal
(using words/language), paraverbal (conveyed in the characteristics of speech such as
tone, inflection, etc.), or non-verbal (facial expression, etc.). Based on the terms of
conversation in social interactions, face-threatening acts are at times inevitable. At
minimum, there must be at least one of the face threatening acts associated with an
utterance. It is also possible to have multiple acts working within a single utterance
(Politeness theory, 2018).

Methodology

The methods used in collecting the data in this study were finding the
interview recording and script through internet. The interview recording was taken from
the official website of Ellen DeGeneres http://www.ellentube.com and downloaded in
order to be analysed and interpreted. The steps made were the following: first,
watching the interview recording, secondly listening on it and lastly interpreting the
scripts. Meanwhile, the process of analyzing the data was also done by classifying the
politeness strategies based on Brown and Levinson’s theory.
Results and Discussion
 WEST VISAYAS STATE UNIVERSITY
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Some of findings of the Face Threatening Acts strategies used in Ellen
DeGeneres’ interview with Selena Gomez as guest star as follows:

Face Threatening Act

No. Excerpt of the interview Speech Act Strategies

BoR + _ OFR
1 Ellen: You’ve been through so Demanding V
many changes that’s I saw you last, explanations from
new label, new manager hmm... interviewee
and a…
Selena Gomez: A new house that Giving explanations
V
I ever own. regarding question
given by
interviewer
Ellen: Yes, and you are living alone Demanding V
now... Do you have a roommate? explanations

V
Selena Gomez: Am yes, one of Giving explanation
my best friends from Texas.

Ellen DeGeneres: Okay so, and Demanding V

that must be liberating? explanation from
interviewee
Selena Gomez: Yeah…yeah and I
V
could like you know walk around Expressing lust
naked now…so [smiling]

V
Ellen DeGeneres: Yeah, yeah... Expressing lust
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[Smiling]... [Audience laughing] that’s
why you live alone.
Selena Gomez: Exactly [chuckling] Accepting V
compliment

Ellen DeGeneres: That’s why you pay

Demanding V
more inches…hmm now…so, what is
explanations
the most exciting thing about living
alone?

Selena: Honestly, I just to enjoy

Giving explanations V
not being able to have to check in
all the time cause my Mom is the
sweetest ever so even now she
checks on me because she’s like I
see you on line here, are you ok?
And am like I’m fine Mom I promise
but I had the best thing just being
on the go and have my own space.

Ellen DeGeneres: Then you have a

Giving compliments V
house you could walk around and
get up what you want to... you are
a free person, you probably never
take away music….

Accepting
Selena Gomez: Yes, and I paint
compliments V
like several layer pounds.
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Ellen DeGeneres: Do you paint? Demanding V

explanations

Selena: Yeah[nods] Giving explanation V

Ellen DeGeneres: Really?

Selena Gomez: Yeah

Ellen DeGeneres: Are you good? Demanding V

explanation

Selena: No Giving explanation V

[audience laughing]

Ellen DeGeneres: But it is Giving compliments V

therapeutic, right.
Selena Gomez: Yes, it is... It Accepting V
helps. compliments

The FTA strategy which used in the question above is Bald on Record. This kind
of strategy does nothing to minimize threats to the hearer's face. While in the answer of
that question, the interviewee was using positive politeness as the strategy. Specifically,
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she was using exaggerate in the way of answering such question by saying exaggerate
expression “you are a free person.”

Face Threatening Act

No. Excerpt of the interview Speech Act Strategies

BoR + _ OFR
Ellen DeGeneres: A thing like that. Demanding V
Taylor Swift supposedly, is trying to explanation
talk with you …now that you have
your own house here; she wants
you to move to New York.

Selena: Yes, she wants to kidnap Giving V

me, she’s been begging me every explanations
time when we were on phone to excessively
meet to New York ‘cause it’s been
really a good thing for her you know
we’ve been friends for seven years
and she really feels like she kinda
step into her own and became a
woman there so I said alright your
turn now common so alright it’s like
so I feel eventually but not really.

Ellen DeGeneres: But you’ve been

doing a lot of work on yourself and if Reminding and V
giving
you risk yourself which I think is
compliments
good for everybody to do every year
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just look in yourself go how am I
doing how am I growing. One to
ten, where are you right now?

Selena Gomez: I’m a seven. V

Accepting
compliments
Ellen DeGeneres: You’re seven?

Selena Gomez: Yes

Ellen Degeneres: That’s good

Giving
V
compliments

Selena Gomez: Yeah... I know this

year has been... You know I just feel Giving V
explanations
like I have been doing this so long
and expressing
that I think people tend to forget dismay
that you know girl, be yourself, be
yourself and I’m so trying to figure
out what that is, so I know I’m not
perfect but I know that I have a lot
of people that support me and love
me and I don’t know, I don’t know
let anyone down so I just tried to be
the best I can be and talk according
twenty.

Ellen DeGeneres: Well in growing Demanding

up in front of everybody being explanations V
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twenty is awkward anytime much
lessen from the public eye and
everybody photograph everything
you do.

Selena Gomez: Yeah but that’s Taking

responsibility
when I get to do amazing things like V
use my flat form for things like
UNICEF for how I shift everything
into what’s important and what
actually matters in the world so
that’s my plus points.
[audience cheering]

Ellen DeGeneres: That was good. Giving

You’re doing great! compliments
V
Selena Gomez: Thank you!
Thanking
V

TOTAL 10 16 2 0

The FTA strategy which used in the excerpt of interview above was negative
politeness and it can damage H’s negative face. The interviewer expresses lust directly
by saying “that’s why you live alone” and “exactly right”.
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The following are the use frequency of FTA strategies in the interview of Ellen
DeGeneres and Selena Gomez as the guest star:

From the whole script of the interview between Ellen DeGeneres and Selena
Gomez as the guest star, can be found that there are 10 (ten) utterances use Bald on
Record strategy, 16 (sixteen) utterances use Positive Politeness, 2 (two) utterances use
Negative politeness, and there is no utterance uses Off Record strategy. So, from the
findings above, it shows that the strategy mostly used in the celebrity interview was
Positive politeness.

Conclusion
Based on the analysis and discussion, conclusions can be drawn from this paper
as follows: In this analysis, there were 28 (twenty-eight) utterances were using FTA
strategies consist of 10 (ten) utterances use Bald on Record, 16 (sixteen) utterances
use Positive Politeness, 2 (two) utterances use Negative politeness, and no utterances
were using Off Record strategy. So, from this analysis, it shows that the FTA strategies
that mostly used in the interview of Ellen DeGeneres and Selena Gomez as the guest
star was Positive politeness. The use of positive politeness was believed to build some
familiar situation between speaker and hearer and sometimes to break the formal
conversation in term of small distance among them. It also confirms that the
relationship is friendly and recognizes that hearer has a desire to be respected.

It also can be concluded that people should be carefully to choose the strategies,
moreover in the conversation of two people in talk show or interview. The audience can
be varying not only adult but also children especially in saying a taboo or sensitive
topic.
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