Politeness Strategy Used by Female Characters in the Little Women Movie

This research is the study of pragmatics on the use of politeness strategy in refusal in ‘Little Women’ movie. The writer used qualitative research for this study. To analyze the data the researcher used the theory by Brown and Levinson's (1987) about politeness strategy. The researcher also analyzed the factors that influence the women characters in choosing certain politeness strategies based on Brown and Levinson (1987)'s theory. The results of the analysis are presented descriptively in this study. There are 36 utterances that carried politeness of refusal uttered by 4 women characters in this movie. Women characters in ‘Little Women’ movie used 4 types of politeness strategies in refusing, namely: positive politeness strategy (1 (2,78%)), negative politeness (3 (8,33%)), bald on-record (20 (55,56%)), and off-record politeness strategy (12 (33,33%)). This research shows that the dominant type of politeness strategy used by women characters in the film Little Women in refusing is bald on-record. It can be concluded that the women characters in this movie want to show their refusal clearly and avoid misunderstanding. There are 3 factors that influence when the women characters choosing certain strategies to use in refusing, namely: social distance (27 (75%)),payoffs (7 (19,45%)), and rank of imposition (2 (5,55%)). The most influential factor is social distance, because the interaction of the characters in this film occurred in the social area between family, neighbors, and friends, so the thing that affects how they behave is social distance such as socioeconomic class or age