Politeness Strategies Analysis Used by Donald Trump in American Presidential Election Debate 2016

This study is established to analyze the use of politeness strategies by Donald Trump in the first 2016 American Presidential Election. The objectives of this research are to (1) identifying the types of politeness strategies, and to (2) describing the sociological variable factors that influence the most dominant politeness strategy. This research applies descriptive qualitative. It is concerned to describe the data in the form of utterances produced by Donald Trump. The source of data is the transcription of the debate retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com /news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/26/the-first-trump-clinton-presidential-debate transcript-annotated/. In conducting this research, the analysis of data uses politeness strategies by Brown and Levinson’s (1987). The data are categorized into the types of politeness strategies. And then, find out the sociological variable factors behind the use dominant strategy. The result of the study shows that four politeness strategies and three sociological variable factors by Brown and Levinson (1987) are employed by Donald Trump in his utterances. In the use of politeness strategies, Trump mostly uses bald on record for 25 times, positive politeness for 15 times, negative politeness for 1 times, and off record for 9 times. Next, the sociological variables factors which affect it are the social distance, the relative power, and the ranking of impositions. In the social distance, the use of bald on record can be done by no effort from speaker to minimize the face threat, using imperative form, giving suggestion, requesting, and showing disagreement. In the relative Power the use of bald on record can be done by applying three sub-strategies those are giving a warning, using no effort from speaker to minimize the face threat, and using imperative form. And the last is in the absolute ranking of impositions can be done by using no effort from speaker to minimize the face threat and requesting. This study suggests for further research can engage the participants as many as possible and conduct the data in the other settings and themes in order to rich the data and also applying any recent theories for producing various findings in the pragmatic studies.
Keywords: Politeness Strategies, Donald Trump, Debate, American Presidential Election