A Study of Language Politeness in Students’ and Lecturers’ WhatsApp Conversation: A Sociolinguistic Approach

Abstract

The emergence of social platforms makes human communication easier without space and time limitations. The study aimed to describe the compliance to the principles of language politeness and violations of the politeness principles in conversation between lecturers and students through WhatsApp messenger. The method used in this study is descriptive-qualitative method. The source of data is from WhatsApp messages exchanged by students and their lecturers which relate to school issues. Some techniques used in conducting this research are; firstly, (1) collecting WhatsApp messages, (2) examining different messages between the two parties, (3) identifying messages related to the obedience and the violation of politeness maxims, (4) analysing the obedience and violation of the politeness maxims, (5) classifying the politeness maxims obeyed or violated, (6) making conclusions. The results of the study conclude that some conversations between lecturers and students have four obedience to the principles of politeness maxims, namely tact maxim, generosity maxim, approbation maxim and sympathy maxim. Also, there were three violations of the principle of politeness in language, namely, tact maxim, agreement maxim and sympathy maxim. Thus, it is observed social variables such as age, social status, gender, power dynamics, context, cultural context affect language politeness between the lecturers and students in the research.