AN ANALYSIS OF POLITENESS STRATEGIES USED BY NETIZENS IN THE COMMENTS ON THE YOUTUBE VIDEO: BARACK OBAMA’S FULL SPEECH AT THE DNC BY ABC NEWS

Abstract

Language plays a very important role in building social relationships, one of which is the use of politeness strategies. These strategies appear in various situations, both spoken and written. This study aims to describe the types of politeness strategies and also identify the function of politeness strategies in the comments section of a video speech by Barack Obama. The writer analyzes sentences in the comments that contain politeness strategies from Barack Obama's video speech. This study uses a qualitative method with observation techniques, and the writer focuses on comments made in August till November 2024. This study uses Brown and Levinson's (1987) theory to identify types of politeness strategies and also uses Holmes (2013) to identify the function of politeness strategies. The results show that there are 80 data containing politeness strategies: 77 data contain positive politeness, 2 data contain Negative politeness, and 1 data contains Off record. In addition, the writer also found 4 functions in all of the data. 78 data contained expressive function, 10 data contained referential function, 3 data contained directive function, and 1 data contained poetic function. The results show that several data contain multiple functions at once. Positive politeness with strategies (exaggerate) was the most dominant in the comments column, and expressive function was also the most dominant in the comments column. Many netizens praised, expressed admiration, and appreciation for Barack Obama's speech skills and his former presidency.