CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
This chapter presents research
contexts, focuses of the study, objectives of the study, significance of the study, scope
and limitation of the study, and definition
of the key terms.
1.1 Research Contexts One of the means by which
individual locates themselves in a community is through language. It can be through written
language or spoken language. In fact, people
realize that language is important for them to be involved in a communication. When people involve in face to
face interactions, several kinds of speech
acts such as complimenting, requesting, disagreeing, and gratitude expression will occur. It happens because the
speech acts are characteristic of spoken
language .
One of the speech acts that has
unique aspects to be investigated is gratitude expression. It is considered unique because
people look at it as politeness behaviour,
as the crucial part to build and establish social relationship. And the researcher assumes that the act of expressing
gratitude may vary because of two important linguistic features such as
different social backgrounds and gender of the speakers for the example, young people may
show gratitude to old people more polite
than older people to young people.
Karin Aijmer, Conversational Routines in
English: Convention and Creativity (Singapore: Longman Singapore Publisher, 1996), 5.
The forms of language usage that person
chooses are the crucial part to build
social relationship . It is said that
expressing gratitude has some important social
values in any society. Hence, it can be said that expressing gratitude is a crucial point to build and to establish a good
relationship with other. In Islam, the concept
of thanking has been mentioned by our prophet Muhammad SAW: "Whoever is given a single act of
kindness to him and he responded by saying:
jazaakallahu khaer (may Allah repay you with goodness), then indeed it has insufficient in expressing her
gratitude." From the verse above, thanking is suggested by religion. Everything
we do to other will give us retribution.
It is clear that after receiving the good thing from the other we should say thanks or thank you.
It is to give appreciation to the person
who has given us something whether it is abstract or concrete thing. In expressing thanking, it is enough by saying
thanks or thank you, and person to whom
we say thanks or thank you will feel appreciated.
In addition, people will express
gratitude when they have received or will receive kindness from other people. Thank you
very much for your helping can be expressed
after the speaker was already helped in preparing his/her car. In other side, the expression can be used before the
speaker get help from the hearer that the
hearer will purpose help the speaker. Therefore, it is a kind of speech acts in
Brown & Yule, Discourse Analysis
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 55.
(HR.At-Tirmidzi (2035), An-Nasaai dalam
Al-kubra (6/53), Al-Maqdisi dalam Al-mukhtarah: 4/1321, Ibnu Hibban: 3413, Al-Bazzar dalam
musnadnya:7/54. Hadits ini dishahihkan Al-Albani dalam shahih Tirmidzi) which the speaker expresses to the hearer
when the past or future acts benefits the speaker
.
When one receives something, she or
he is expected to give the response in the
form of gratitude expression. The response (in expressing gratitude) is related
to the value of material or immaterial
thing that she or he receives. Here, the speaker has to pay attention on the strategies
in expressing gratitude based on the value
of thing that she or he gets. The strategies that she or he uses to respond a simple compliment may be different from those
that he or she uses to replay a special
gift.
One of the gratitude expression
that is mostly used is thanking. Thanking is the way to express gratitude explicitly. In
many situations and occasions, people may
produce this expression to show their gratitude. When child receives a cake from his or her parents she or he is hoped to
say thank you. One who gets suggestion
or help from his or her friend should express the gratitude feeling by saying thank you or other expressions of
gratitude. According to Leech, thanking as
one of the speech acts coincides with a convival function. Therefore, since chilhood children are thaught by the parents
on how and when they should thank others .
Thanking, especially the strategy
that is used, is the topic of this reseacrh because the researcher thinks that thanking is
an important speech which is used in
daily communication to serve social function. We can see that expression of Aijmer, Conversational Routines in English:
Convention and Creativity, 35.
Ibid, 36.
thank you is applied widely in daily
interaction. Thank you is usually used when person gets something from others.
Studies on gratitude expressions
have been done by some previous studies.
For example, Johansen (2008) has
investigated on A Comparative Study of Gratitude
Expressions in Norwegian and English from an Interlanguage Pragmatics and Second Language Acquisition
Research Perspective. The result of his
research is that there are similarities in the use of strategies expressing gratitude used by native speakers of English
and native speakers of Norwegian.
Husain and Wahid (2008)
investigated on the Role of Transfer in Thanking and Apologizing in English: A Study on ESL
Speakers of Hindustani. The results show
that expressing obligation and indebtedness was the most frequent strategy type in writing while the most frequent
strategy type in the interviews was that of complimenting the benefactor or appreciating
the gift or the favour. Fauziyah (2010)
has investigated the used of gratitude expressions in Rachel getting married movie. The researcher found that
gratitude expressions are often used to express
positive emotion than to express negative emotion.
From a cross-cultural
perspective, speech acts may differ both with regard to strategies and the social and cultural
rules for their use . Based on the explanation and the previous studies above,
the researcher focuses on gratitude expressions
and responses based on different social aspects. In other words, the previous researchers above compared gratitude
expressions in a different language from
different notion. Furthermore, they used descriptive-quantitative or Ibid, 33.
descriptive-qualitative research in analyzing
the data while the researcher of this study
used descriptive qualitative.
In that case, the researcher
analyzes this research used Aijmer‟s theory to
analyze the data. Eight functions
of Aijmer‟s theory of gratitude expression are more understandable and complete than other
theories. Moreover, the researcher analyzes
gratitude expressions and gratitude responses used by the characters of “Charlie Bartlett” movie. This analysis is
based on the way how all characters used
gratitude in their conversation because every person is different in delivering
gratitude. There are differences in whom
one says thank you to, when one says thank
you . It also depends on the situation
and the condition since it is in the conversation
analysis that is analyzing the phenomena of talk interaction among people in the movie.
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