Students’ Politeness Strategy in Texting through WA Message in Performing Language Intelligence: Socio-Pragmatics Study

Abstract

The phenomenon of the COVID-19 shocked the world which made almost all activities outside the home nearly stopped as well as academic activities such as face-to-face lectures. In such a situation, students and lecturers had to continue their learning activities through online media. In communicating through WA, the researchers wanted to classify the types of politeness strategy and its function in different gender in texting the lecturers through WA message using the theory of politeness strategy by Brown and Levinson. The research design used was qualitative design and the method was document analysis. The subjects were ten male students and ten female students. The findings showed that there were only three politeness strategies implemented by students in texting through WA message, namely: positive politeness strategy, negative politeness strategy and off record strategy. Negative politeness was the most preferred politeness strategy that indicated students’ language intelligence.

Keywords: Politeness Strategy, Texting Through WA Message, Language Intelligence, Socio-Pragmatics Study