CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
1.1
Background of the Study
Language is the way to convey a purpose from the
speaker to the hearer.
From language a person used, it
can be judged whether the speaker is polite or less polite and gives a benefit to the hearer or
give a cost to the hearer, this is called Tact Maxim. Leech states that Tact Maxim is
Minimize the expression of beliefs which imply cost to other; maximize the expression
of beliefs which imply benefit to other (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/politeness_maxims).
It means a person who holds on to this
maxim is a person who always minimizes a profit for himself and maximizes a profit for other people in conversation
activity. This maxim makes us become well mannered and polite to speak and behave to
other people. For example : “Could I interrupt
you for a second? If I could just clarify this then” and “ Are you willing to give me some money ?” Tact Maxim is one of six
maxims formulated by Leech in politeness principle. They are Tact, Generosity,
Approbation, Modesty, Agreement, and Sympathy.
There are (Leech, 1983:109) two sides of Tact maxim, a negative side is Minimize the cost to hearer (h), and a
positive side is Maximize the benefit to h’.Leech has proposed that Tact
maxim is a way of explaining how politeness operates in conversational exchanges. He
defines (in http://www.teachit.co.uk/armoore/lang/pragmatics.htm) politeness as
forms of behavior that establish
and maintain comity. That is the ability of participants in a social interaction to engage in interaction in
an atmosphere of relative harmony.
Furthermore,
he (Leech, 1983:107) states that the most important kind of politeness in English-speaking society is covered by the
operation of the TACT MAXIM.
Tact Maxim can be illuminating
discussions in literary works, and hence a new perspective into literary appreciation and
criticism. For instance, (Nurdianingsih:
2006) it is of great help to understand
a piece of work by focusing on its
deictically expressions. Tact Maxim as politeness, can also shed light to the analysis of development of dialogs in novels,
dramas, poems, and short story.
In analyzing Tact Maxim in
literary works we can judge whether the literary works teach a politeness or not, and how
tactful the literary works in conveying the works is.
Tact Maxim is included in one of
the study of Pragmatics. While Pragmatics is the study of those relations between
language and context that are grammaticalized,
or encoded in the structure of a language (Leech, 1983:12).
Pragmatics (Yule, 1996:3) is a
branch of linguistics which is concerned with the study of meaning as communicated by a speaker
or writer and interpreted by a listener
or reader.
The writer chooses this topic “An
Analysis of Tact Maxim in selected short stories of Oscar Wilde” to help the readers
aware that tactful in conversation with other
people is very important in our life. By studying about Tact maxim, the reader can give a command with a polite sentence,
think more about people’s benefit than himself
to avoid hurt feeling, and make other
people enjoy when having a conversation
with us.
The
writer takes short story as the object of study because language used in short story is easier and not difficult to
understand and she is interested to discuss Tact maxim point of view and to identify
tactful teaching implant for children in conversation with others. All of these short stories are stories for
children that describe the kindness of the characters. The example can
be seen through the conversation found
in Happy Prince, the prince asked swallow to give his ruby to a woman whose child is very thirsty but she does
not have money to buy water.
“Swallow, Swallow, little
Swallow, will you not bring her the ruby out of my swordhilt? My feet are
fastened to this pedestal and I cannot move.” Short story in this thesis is
limited to children short story written by Oscar Wilde. There are four short stories to be
analyzed in this thesis. They are Happy Prince,
The Nightingale and the Rose, The Remarkable Rocket and The Selfish Giant. Oscar Wilde is one of the writer’s
favorite writer. His works are lovely to read and always give a good story for reader. He is
well known enough in literary. That is the
reason of the writer to choose Oscar Wilde works as the object of study in this
thesis.
Based on the explanation above,
the writer is interested in analyzing Tact maxim found in the four short stories written
by Oscar Wilde.
1.2
Problems of the Study The problems are as the following : 1. What utterance that has sides of Tact maxim
found in selected short stories classified
as a negative side ‘Minimize the cost to hearer (h)’, and a positive side, ‘Maximize the benefit to h’? 2. What
utterance that has Tact maxim found in selected short stories classified as more polite or less polite? 1.3 Objectives
of the study Derived from the problems mentioned above, the objectives of the
study are : 1. Classifying the side of
each utterance found in selected short stories that has Tact Maxim whether a negative side (Minimize
the cost to hearer (h)), and a positive
side (Maximize the benefit to h).
2. Classifying utterance that has Tact maxim
found in selected short stories whether
more polite or less po lite.
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