Politeness and Impoliteness Strategies in Some Javanese Jokes

Purpose: This article tries to overview some Javanese jokes to find out some possible politeness strategies based on Brown’s and Levinson’s pragmatic theory. As a joke normally consists of jabs and punches and pragmatics discusses locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts, this article relates the element of the jokes to the locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts especially in the view of politeness strategy. Some of the jokes may involve rather dirty jokes in the sense that they are not explicitly dirty jokes. Methodology: The data of Javanese jokes are obtained from the internet due to the fact that many Javanese jokes are available in the internet of Javanese traditional shows of shadow puppet shows or wayangkulit performances. The data in the form of jokes are described in terms of their elements and then their meanings are analyzed pragmatically in the view of politeness strategy. Results: Some Javanese jokes make use of politeness strategy of face preserving strategy so that both the hearer’s and speaker’s face or self-esteem is maintained. This kind of strategy may prevent children from being involved in matters of adult things. Implications: Politeness strategies in Javanese jokes are capable of hiding adult materials from children. This is a kind of veil, which is necessary and wants appreciating much for joke writers and performers