A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF POLITENESS STRATEGIES IN MULAN MOVIE

Pragmatics deals with language use in the context that relates to the speech acts' meaning. Politeness strategies and politeness principles, as the manifestation of pragmatics, are two determining communication factors of both speaker and hearer. This qualitative study was intended to analyze the politeness strategies used by the main character Mulan and her family. The data were collected using the observation checklist adapted from Brown and Levinson (1987) framework for politeness strategies. The findings showed that all of Brown and Levinson’s strategies were found in Mulan ’s and the other characters’ utterances in the movie. The most frequently used strategy was positive politeness, which was found to occur four times in the movie. Bald-on record and negative politeness were the second most used strategies in the movie with three occurrences each. While off-record and don’t do FTA occurred twice and once, respectively. The result of the pragmatic analysis showed that the use of politeness strategies in Mulan movie was influenced and determined by the characters’ cultural background.


INTRODUCTION
In recent decades, researchers have been investigating different areas of pragmatics to better understand how a language is used. Pragmatics concerns with how and why people use language in particular ways. Thus, according to Watts (2003), they have to pay attention to other people's expectations. In this case, being polite involves the 186 awareness of others' feelings. Politeness could be analyzed from many sides and types of discourse media, such as books and real conversations. A researcher can also investigate the politeness portrayed in movies. In this regard, a movie is one of the most popular media in society and can be used to analyze politeness. The researcher aimed to investigate the principles of politeness based on the preceding description. It is critical to undertake research into these factors to understand the speech used in the contact and view it appropriately in light of the circumstance. Because speakers and hearers unconsciously threaten to face each other in a conversation, their use must be appropriate to avoid the facethreatening act (Henceforth called FTA). The researcher intended to analyze the strategies of politeness in the movie of Mulan which focuses on the utterances of the main character of this movie.
This movie was categorized in the genres of action, adventure, and drama (IMDb.com, 2020). Niki Caro directed the movie. The main character of the movie was Hua Mulan, who was starred by Liu Yifei. The film depicted the narrative of a young Chinese woman who assumes the identity of a man to fight in place of her father. She was given the job of bringing dignity to her family as a child. Mulan depicted a situation where the Chinese Empire was being assaulted from the north by the Huns. The emperor ordered each family to send one warrior to the battlefield to fight. Meanwhile, her family has no male members other than her father. Her father's condition, who was old, then made Mulan run away from home with his father's war equipment and clothes. She then joined other soldiers and took part in pre-war training. Finally, Hua Mulan took on her father's role in the royal army. She spent her youth on the battlefield for twelve years before retiring to her village (Cheu, 2007).
The researchers selected Mulan as the object of data collection since this movie presented politeness strategies in the communication and interaction of the characters in the movie. The theme of the movie also corroborated it. The Mulan movie had the theme of a kingdom that certainly upholds the strategy of politeness in every scene. In addition, the Chinese culture also highly maintains the culture of politeness which is also called Wulun, "Five relationships" (Ma, 2009). Such culture is shown in the Mulan movie. For instance, the characters in the movie placed their utterances based on their interlocutors' social status. Moreover, the Chinese culture of the past and the stories about the empire in the past that were featured in Mulan gave a strong impression of cultures, leadership, struggle, beliefs and unique arrangements in interacting with high expressions of politeness values.

Pragmatics
The study of meaning in communication, whether between a speaker and a listener or between a writer and a reader, is referred to as pragmatics (Yule, 1996). It focuses on observing what people mean through their speech or contextual meaning (Glaser, 2009) rather than the meaning of the words or phrases of each word they use. Pragmatics is a term that emerged in 1959 introduced by Austin in his speech act theory (1962). Searle (Mey, 2009, p. 207) coined the term ten years later in his work 'Speech Act and Essay in The Philosophy of Language.' The term pragmatics came from the Greek 'pragmaticos' and the Latin 'pragmaticus' in which both terms mean 'practical' (Unubi, 2016).
From the two explanations above, it can be briefly defined that pragmatics is a speech act that is performed due to the use of a sound (Mey, 2009, p. 702). It happens since the listener understands the speaker's utterance as his expressive response. Istvan (2014, p. 6) defined pragmatics as a part of linguistics that centers around the utilization of language in social settings and the manners by which people create and perceive meaning through language.

Politeness
In general, politeness is frequently characterized as an etymological attitude that may cause the hearer to feel good. Consequently, the boundary of being polite is the accommodation inside part of the addressees. Escandell-Vidal (1998) stated that the word polite is divided into three types, namely 1) the polite nature of civil society and considered correct according to the social perspective of society; 2) polite in form or nature-friendly behavior or behave well; and 3) courteous arising from the wise one's identity.
There are several definitions of politeness put forward by several experts, including Lakoff (as cited in Culpeper, 2011) who said that politeness is something that appears in the community as an effort to prevent and reduce conflict between them. Leech (1983) defines politeness as an attempt to avoid friction and give respect (Watts, 2003). Furthermore, Mills (2003) stated that politeness is the style, appearance, and specific character of a speaker's face, which he expresses his meaning to his interlocutors. Hence, another does not feel threatened by him. Blum-Kulka (in Xiujun, 2001) said that there are two needs to be achieved in interaction: the need for clarity of information conveyed and the need for freedom to avoid coercion. In other words, politeness concerns with keeping another person's feelings from doing things that make him uncomfortable or bothered.
Various politeness strategies are used in daily interactions to keep communication running well. Each culture determines the limits of politeness Thus, cultures from one another have a specific form of politeness in communicating with their surroundings (Johnstone, 2008). Interestingly, in establishing interpersonal communication between speakers and listeners, each provides various types of politeness strategies that can measure the level of their interaction (Woods, 2014).

Speech Acts
Two philosophers named John Austin and John Searle in the 1960s originally put the theory of speech acts forward. Austin (1962) said that every time a speaker utters a sentence, the speaker is doing something with the words in that sentence. In other words, saying something means doing something. Speech acts occur because the function of language is a tool to convey messages or meanings from speakers to speech partners. Yule (1996: 47) also stated that speech acts are speech in communication involving an action. Based on this statement, it is known that speech acts are actions that are carried out through speech that allows the speaker to do so. Thus, an action is a characteristic of speech in communication. It is assumed that in realizing speech or discourse, someone does something. Austin (1962) classified speech acts into three categories, the first of which is the locutionary act, which involves informing or stating something. An illocutionary is when a speaker wants his speech partner to do something. In addition to activities that affect the interlocutor, Perlocutionary activities necessitate specific reactions, impacts, or outcomes from the speech partners.

Brown and Levinson's Politeness Theory
In their extraordinary book, Brown and Levinson proposed the idea of a face. According to Brown and Levinson (1987), the form of politeness in appreciating and acknowledging the different politeness strategies used by various cultures in interacting reflects respect for diversity. They formulate a theory of 'faces', where they consider faces to give a positive and negative impression. A positive impression is a facial expression that gives the impression to the other person that his wish is approved. On the other hand, a negative impression is the wish not to be obstructed in one's actions (Johnstone, 2008). Besides, Gu (1990) adds that Brown and Levinson's theory can be recognized in two ways: cross-cultural explanations of face-threatening actions and the politeness used to rectify FTA.

Face
The theory of politeness, which has been mentioned above, can be concluded that politeness is closely related to 'face'. Yule (1996, p. 60) defines 'face' as someone's public self-image. He explains that everyone emotionally and socially expects to know each other. The idea of a face was taken by Brown and Levinson (1987, p. 61) from Goffman (1967), and the term was used by the British who at that time said that people who were humiliated or insulted were called 'losing faces'. They concluded that the face is a body member that is very much considered by everyone when interacting.
Everyone who interacts with each other takes care not to threaten the face of the other person. In other words, people would defend their faces against threats from others. Thus, generally, people will cooperate in maintaining their faces in interactions. The conclusion is that building social norms and values in interaction is essential, one of which is to respect each other's faces. On the contrary, face respect is sometimes ignored in certain conditions and times, whether it is because of an urgent matter, both parties are involved in specific problems, etc. Brown and Levinson (1987) group the faces into two components, namely positive faces and negative faces. A positive face means someone's desire to act freely without coercion. In contrast a negative face is someone's effort to respect his wishes and get approval from the interlocutor (Watts, 2003). In short, the person who shows a positive face wants to be appreciated and the person who shows a negative face wants freedom without interference (Aliakbari & Moalemi, 2015).

Face-Threatening Act (FTA)
The Face Threatening Act (FTA) deals with actions that degrade the 'face' or self-esteem of others in which they feel threatened (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p. 68). In interacting, threats are measured by the listener's response, not the speaker. Although the speaker does not intend to threaten the listener, he will carry out a self-respect defense when the listener perceives it as a threat. Everyone does not want to feel threatened by others, and vice versa. Other people will maintain the norm of decency not to demean and threatene others, and anyone will do things to avoid these actions.
Further, Brown and Levinson (1987) also explain that the use of FTA is influenced by three social factors, namely power, social distance and ranking of imposition. Power is a relationship statement statinghow much a person can force another person without losing face. Social Distance is a measure of social contact between the speaker and the interlocutor to know each other and how their relationship is in context. Ranking of imposition is the relative status of the type of speech act in a situation that is considered less face-threatening.

Politeness Strategies
The politeness strategy is a way for speakers to reduce the number of FTAs (Brown & Levinson, 1987). For example, the politeness technique aids speakers in saving the hearer's face when they unknowingly or unexpectedly engage in FTAs (Peng, Xie, & Cai, 2014). It also can be defined as an action conveyed in minimizing the risk (Fukada & Asato, 2004) or a confrontation barrier (e.g., in Thai people). In their social culture, if there is a conflict or problem with other people, they do several things to avoid it, such as not igniting emotions, staying away from people who have problems, expressing their feelings to the person concerned, and doing mediation (Lakoff & Ide, 2005).
Bald on record indicates that the relationship between the speaker and the listener is very close. In this strategy, the speaker can speak directly to the listener by saying his meaning in the words he wants to say without minimizing the FTA. For instance, it is also classified as a strategy of missing politeness (Brown & Levinson, 1987;Lakoff & Ide, 2005). This method is most commonly utilized by people who are familiar with each other and who are on the same level as them (Coupland, Grainger, & Coupland, 1988, p. 257), such as friends. This strategy is classified as the lowest polite because the delivery of the words is done explicitly and concisely. If it was spoken to other people who are not familiar with him, it would cause the hearer's negative face.
Next, a positive politeness strategy is a strategy that encourages a person to show a positive self-image towards others. Positive politeness is needed and used in the social interaction of society. A society that is a collection of several people who live and relate to each other in one environment has undoubtedly upheld the value of politeness. Thus, deliberately or indeliberately, this strategy appears in society with the aim that everyone in that environment can show a good impression on each other and strengthen their relationship (Brown & Levinson, 1987).
Subsequently, a negative politeness technique is a method of preventing and reducing risks from negative face speakers whose desires may be burdensome to the listener/addressee. Brown and Levinson (1987) and Watts (2003) mentioned that there are ten negative politeness strategies.
According to Brown and Levinson (1987), the off-record strategy is used by a speaker when conducting an FTA, but he doesn't want to do it explicitly. In this strategy, the speaker provides utterances that the listener with various interpretations can understand.
Last not the least, don't do the FTA is a uniqe strategy used by a speaker to convey a message to the listener that does not offend him (Brown & Levinson, 1987). It means the speaker does not do any FTA that disgrace the hearer's face in conveying the messages.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The research design used in this study was descriptive qualitative, where this type of research can understand and describe things that are the object of research (Kumar, 2011). In this present study, the data were presented in the form of a real explanation of the object observed. Hence, this type of qualitative research was very suitable to this study. The data were collected and noted based on Brown and Levinson (1987). In the observation process, the researcher observed the utterances uttered by the main character of Mulan with her co-fellows. Thus, the researcher recorded all the utterances they said in this stage and then grouped them into the prepared observation sheet. The researcher found that the main character uttered the five types of Brown and Levinson's politeness strategy from the observation.

Data and Source of Data
The data of this study include script dialogue, all utterances, and the expressions of the main characters in the movie. Primary and secondary data were collected from several sources. Every utterance and expression shown by the main character of the Mulan (Hua Mulan) were the primary data of this study gained directly by watching the movie. While the secondary data were the script of Mulan gained from the Siveskull webpage (2020). The secondary source was used as an additional guideline to discover whenever the main characters appeared and to track the plot.

Technique of Data Collection
Data collection in this study was carried out in two stages. In the first stage, the researchers watched the whole movie Mulan and wrote down the time of each scene played by the main character. In this step, the researchers took notes whenever the main character appeared: thus, this step facilitated the next step.
In the second stage, the researchers returned to watch the movie by skimming based on the main character's scene time. For instance, this step was done to observe the utterances of the main characters by referring to the first step. Thus, the researchers simply sorted the scenes based on these notes by skimming to save time. Every word spoken by the movie's main character was transcribed in the observation sheet provided. This second stage was repeated several times until the researchers got concrete data.

Technique of Data Analysis
Researchers formulated several phases of action in analyzing research data. The data collected was in the form of the main actor's utterances from the movie Mulan, tabulated based on the character set by Brown and Levinson (1987). The data were analyzed using the method Miles, Huberman, and Saldaña (2014) proposed, namely, data condensation, data display, and drawing and verifying conclusions.

Data condensation
In this phase, the researcher processed the data obtained by sorting and focusing on the object of this research. The researcher watched the movie numerous times to note the statements included in the politeness techniques and politeness principles to acquire the anticipated data. Mulan's movie script was used to focus on identifying the conversations that the movie characters had. The researcher eliminated dialogue that excluded monologues on politeness strategies and the principles of politeness. To make it easier to present the data into sheets, the researcher provided codes, times, and marks for each type of strategy (including sub-strategy) and the principles of politeness that were uttered.

Data display
The researcher presented the findings in this second phase to address the two research questions posed in the first chapter. At both points, the researcher presented the types of politeness found by presenting, demonstrating, and explaining the utterances of the politeness strategies and principles. These utterances were in the form of sentences or phrases uttered by the characters in the Mulan movie. Thus, the researcher observed to determine the context of the data and explained the strategies and principles of politeness used in the movie descriptively.

Data drawing and verifying conclusion
This third phase is needed to ensure no data loss and errors. The researcher took several steps to analyze the collected data. The data was analyzed by going over the acquired information, coding each piece of information, and breaking it into categories, such as the politeness strategy group with its types and the principal politeness group with its types. Lastly, the analysis determined the function, purpose, and background of using strategies or the principles of politeness in conversations that were conducted by the characters and concluded the research results.

Results
Based on Brown and Levinson's (1987) theory, politeness strategies consist of five types; bald-on record, positive politeness, negative politeness, off-record, and don't do FTA. In this study, the researchers found that Mulan and other characters used all politeness strategies in the movie. As the findings show, the positive politeness strategy was used four times; bald-on record and negative politeness strategies were used three times each. Off-record occurred twice and don't do FTA occurred once. An example of the findings was given for each of the strategy respectively. Lucky you. In the conversation above, Mulan used a sub-strategy bald-on record; "permit something the listener asked for". This sub-strategy is used to satisfy the interlocutor's face when the interlocutor requires the speaker's permission to use this strategy.

Bald-on Record
Hua Jun (Huan Mulan), Honghui, and other soldiers were doing the exercises. During a break, they ate while chatting with their group of friends and one of them suddenly told the woman he loved that he had left. He explained the characteristics of the woman while holding the picture. The others said the characteristics of their ideal woman. Only Hua Jun did not say what his ideal woman was. Honghui also asked him. He was forced to tell the characteristics of the woman he liked. But one of them Yao made fun of him until Hua Jun felt embarrassed. At night Hua Jun was already in the barracks, Honghui came in and was about to sleep. While walking over to Hua Jun, he advised her not to be made fun of by them anymore, especially Yao. Further, Honghui was still curious whether Hua Mulan/Hua Jun had a lover left in her hometown. Therefore, Jun used a sub-bald-on record "permit something the listener asked for" to answer the question. The positive politeness sub-strategy; "joke" was used in the dialogue above. It is one of the forms of positive politeness strategy is to use jokes in speech. The form of politeness with jokes aims to create intimacy between the speaker and the speaker. Using jokes in speech will sound less rigid and sound more polite.

Positive Politeness
This conversation takes place in Mulan and Xiu's bedroom, Mulan is combing her sister's hair while joking that there is a spider in her hair, Xiu feels scared and tries to calm her down, here to show that Mulan cares for her sister, she applied sub-strategy of positive politeness, namely, "joke" to reduce it. The distance happened before because of the joke. A sub-strategy of negative politeness; "the question, hedge" was used by Mulan in the dialogue above. This sub-strategy is used in speech to avoid continuity to the core of the problem. The use of a hedge can avert a threat to the hearer's negative face.

Negative Politeness
This conversation took place in the dining room after the king decided that each family was obliged to send a boy to the battlefield, Mulan's father insisted on going to the battlefield but Mulan felt pessimistic about the strength of his disabled. Here, Mulan used one of the negative politeness subsections, namely, "the question, hedge" to soften the emphasis on her father's condition. An off-record sub-strategy was used in the excerpt above which is "presuppose". This strategy is carried out through statements that are relevant to the context and invites addressees to seek interpretations of their possible relevance only at the level of their presupposition.

Off-record
Mulan met her father who was preparing supplies for the battlefield and hoped that her father would not have to fight if he were a son. In this situation, Mulan used a sub-off-record; "presuppose" to make her father rethink his decision. When Mulan attended a matchmaking event,the matchmaker was explaining the concept of being a good wife. Mulan used don't do the FTA to show that she did not want to offend a matchmaker or lowered her self-esteem.

Discussions
The research question regarding the politeness strategy used by the main character in Mulan found that there were five strategies used in the five politeness-strategy theory belongs to Brown and Levinson (1987). It means that the main character in Mulan used all strategy types. Those politeness strategies are bald-on record, positive politeness, negative politeness, off the record, and do not do FTA.
Analysis indicates that two circumstances of bald-on record used in Mulan, namely, permit something the listener asked for and communication difficulties. By performing a bald-on record strategy, the speaker directly reveals the impact of H on the impact S. It is relatively revealed by the responses shown, such as shock or feeling uncomfortable. To avoid misunderstandings and save time, H took this strategy. The first bald-on record strategy showed Mulan feeling surprised that Honghui was asking something that personal. Mulan immediately uttered the words "no", "yes" and "but" followed by the emphasizing sentences. This reaction showed that Mulan try not to mince words to answer Honghui's question.
Besides, what should be underlined is that Mulan gave an answer with this strategy because she felt the threat to her face was very small. This is also a form of bald-on record 'without redress' (Brown & Levinson, 1987). While Zhou used the sub-strategy since he has no idea stopping Mulan but trying to remind her from afar. In another finding, Nailah (2016) used the bald-on record ten times by the main characters. The characters used the bald-on record strategy since they counterbalance the emotion. Another finding on the use of the politeness strategy in the movie is a study conducted by Nurilaila, Ricahyono, Setyadi and Arifin (2020). They found that the characters played by the Japanese used a bald-on record 6 times in their interactions. However, characters played by Americans use a strategy bald-on record up to 11 times.
Furthermore, Mulan also uttered the positive politeness strategy while talking with her sister. She used this strategy to relieve her sister's fear. At that moment, Mulan used one of the sub-strategies in the positive politeness strategy, namely, 'joke'. Brown and Levinson (1987) stated that a joke calms the H over his faux pas. The previous research conducted by Sholikah (2018) also found the utterances used which was influenced by the social distance between the speaker and the interlocutor. The speaker and the interlocutor were not so close; thus, the speaker tried to be polite and chose to use that strategy so that the interlocutor did not feel uncomfortable. However, Mulan and her sister were in a different situation, they were so close to each other since they acted as relative in that movie. Zhou used the sub-strategy "avoid disagreement" and "give or ask for a reason" when talking to his wife. While his wife, Li, used "be optimistic" to reply to Zhou.
The main character used up the negative politeness one time. When Mulan was mad at her father since she did not let her father go to the battlefield. She used the question or hedge sub-strategy to emphasize that her father could not fight anymore. Further, the main character's mother also used negative politeness once when talking with her husband. In line with Brown and Levinson (1987) S uttered the hedge sub-strategy to reduce the expression of speech so as not to be seen S disagrees. However, Nailah (2016) found that the main characters of Transformer: Age of Extinction" movie used this strategy seven times.
In using off-record utterances, Mulan chose to utter, presuppose sub-strategy while talking with her father. This strategy is suitably used in the conversation context since Brown and Levinson (1987) said that the utterances hinted at are relevant. In this sub-strategy, S invites H to seek an interpretation of the possible relevance only at the presupposition level. Mulan uttered the speech since she wanted her father to not have gone if she had afforded a substitute. Besides that, don't do FTA strategy was used by the main character of the movie since she was face to face with a matchmaker. It was indeed one of the cultures that the people must follow by the people due to the faith they believe. It seemed not one of the politeness pursuits, it is more of a belief in elevating the supernatural.
Based on the result of this study on the politeness strategies, which are linked to the Chinese politeness culture (wulun) influences. That the Mulan movie also carried out the culture of politeness. It could be proved that the main character of Mulan favored using an off-record strategy in conveying her desires. She did that to be more careful to save the interlocutors' face from FTAs. The researchers considered that the strategy used by the female character when talking to her family was different from when talking to superiors, people who were respected, and people of the same age. When she disagreed with her parents, she tended to use negative politeness and off-record strategies, but when her father disagreed, he chose to use a bald-on record. However, the female main character in the Transformer: Age of Extinction" movie was set to use a bald-on record when talking with her father (Nailah, 2016).
Furthermore, in the strategy used by the husband and wife in expressing their opinion that allows FTAs to occur, the husband chose to use positive politeness and the wife used both positive and negative politeness. She (Mulan) used a bald-on record with people in the same age (Honghui), used positive politeness when talking to her sister, and used the do not do FTA strategy when talking to a matchmaker. The results of this explanation when related to their culture, that the use of politeness culture (wulun) was also applied in the movie. The relationship between wulun and the characters in Mulan's movie was considered of the altruism of the characters. The altruism in the wulun is based on graded love (Ma, 2009). Therefore, naturally, the highest love existed in the family. Thus, the form of politeness strategy used represents it.

Conclusion
This study aimed to discover how Brown and Levinson (1987) politeness principles were applied in Mulan. This study focused on the research goal, which was to analyze the politeness strategies utilized by the main character and family in communication. Based on the observation done, the researchers found that the main character of Mulan and the family used the fifth Brown and Levinson's politeness strategies. Those strategies are bald-on record three times, positive politeness four times, negative politeness three times, off-record two times, and do not do FTA once.

Suggestions
The issue of politeness greatly affects the quality of communication between language users. The use of polite language is also adjusted to the interlocutor, the context, and the conditions of the communication space. After conducting a study on this issue, the researchers hope that anyone should uphold and implement the politeness strategies in communication, indeed, adapted to the culture of the community. Increasing politeness in speech acts has impacted approximately social relations among others.
Also, this research needs to extend to increase linguistic knowledge. Recent theories can be developed and promoted to find correlations that provide meaningful feedback for the current environment. Much time needs to be provided for research on this issue, such that the data collected will be even deeper. In this regard, future researchers may explore further in their studies.