POLITENESS, GENDER AND POWER: THE STUDY OF MAKING AND RESPONDING TO REQUEST IN MOANA MOVIE SCRIPT

Sabta Diana, Serly Yusita, Syamsul Anam

Abstract

The article investigates the relation of politeness, gender and power in making and responding to request between two person with different social status and rank in Moana movie. Trosborg’s taxonomy of request strategies (1995), Face Threatening Acts (FTAs), and politeness strategies by Brown and Levinson (1987), Fairclough theory of power (1989) are applied to explain the phenomenon of how the act of making and responding to requests influence the possible politeness strategies, the construction of gender by language choices and their power. The study indicates that Moana, a daughter of the chief village, succeeds in reaching her goal of her mission to request Maui to restore the ‘heart’ of Te Fiti and further restore and heal the nature. Moana’s success, despite Maui’s rank and status as a powerful male demigod, is the result of her communication of using request strategy, which also demonstrate her powerful position. The finding of this study reveals that both characters’ ways on making and responding request are related to and determine their gender and power.

Keywords

Face Threatening Acts (FTAs); politeness strategies; request stategies; gender; power; Trosborg’s request strategies

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References

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.20961/hsb.v4i1.32792

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