Positive Politeness Strategy types by Kaz Firpo, Patrick Burleigh, and Ryan Firpo in The

Eternals Movie Script

HESTI MUQAROMAH AINI

mhesti30@gmail.com

SUHARTAWAN BUDIANTO
suhartawan.budianto@unitomo.ac.id

Abstract
Eternals is an American superhero movie in 2021 by Kaz Firpo. The saga of The Eternals, a r
ace of immortals, lived on Earth and shaped its history and civilization. It follows the events
of Avengers: Endgame (2019). An unexpected tragedy forces the Eternals, ancient aliens wh
o have lived on Earth in secret for thousands of years and gone out of the shadows, to reunite
against humanity's most ancient foes, the Deviants. This movie illustrates a vivid example of
using positive and negative politeness strategies in the utterances of The Eternals movie’s cas
t. As a result, this attracts the reader's attention to analyze the use of positive and negative pol
iteness strategies in The Eternals movie. A problem is formulated: what types of positive poli
teness strategies are used by Ikaris in the movie “The Eternals”?
Public document analysis used as a research method, where The Eternals movie script is the d
ata source. In analyzing the data, the thesis writer uses the theory of positive politeness strate
gies from Brown and Levinson (1987) to classify the utterances from Ikaris in The Eternals m
ovie into fifteen positive politeness strategies.
Keywords: politeness, politeness strategies, positive politeness strategies

A. INTRODUCTION
According to Shannon and Weaver (1949), communication is a form of human interacti
on that influences each other intentionally or unintentionally. Communication is an important
part that cannot be separated from human life as social beings. In communication, language is
used as an intermediary to deliver one's thoughts or feelings to others. There are many ways o
f communication, such as verbal and non-verbal communication. Communication will not be
successful if there is a misunderstanding between the speaker and the hearer. It is essential to
carefully consider a person's attitude when saying something because if we are not careful, so
meone will be offended by what we say.
It is necessary to be polite in conveying information so that misunderstandings do not o
ccur and do not hurt other people's feelings. Also, it can build a good relationship with other
people. Mills (2003:6) defined politeness as a speaker's expression to reduce threats to others.
Politeness is essential in all aspects of life. There are several reasons why politeness is import
ant in everyday social life. One of them is because by showing a polite attitude, a person can
be appreciated and loved as a social being wherever they are.
Politeness can also be applied to people using kind and polite words. Polite words will
make the other person feel satisfied and happy when getting a good impression from the spea
ker rather than giving something to the person accompanied by unpleasant words. It will hurt
the feelings of those who are the listeners.
As explained by Nordquist (2020), politeness strategies are speech acts that express spe
cific concern for others and minimize threats to shallowness ("face"), particularly in social co
ntexts. Face refers to the respect a private has for themself that maintains "self-respect" public
ly or in personal situations. Someone usually tries to avoid embarrassing others or making the
m feel uncomfortable. Face Threatening Act (FTA) refers to individual self-image expectatio
ns threatened by the act of communication (Yule, 1996:61).
Brown and Levinson (1987) mentioned that politeness strategies have four types: bald o
n-record, positive politeness strategies, negative politeness strategies, and off-record. It was c
hosen to consider that when a speaker performs an FTA, it will reflect their feelings and influ
ence their response.
Politeness strategies refer to verbal and written forms of communication. People can co
mmunicate in various types of media, one of them in the form of a movie. Hornby (2006:950)
stated that a movie is a series of moving images recorded with a sound that tells a story show
n in a cinema or TV. The movie is a term encompassing individual motion pictures, the field
of the movie as an art form, and the motion pictures industry. Choosing a movie as a literary
work to be studied using a pragmatic study of politeness strategies is exciting.
This study focuses on positive politeness strategies in the movie "The Eternals" which
has ten characters in this movie, but out of these ten characters will focus on one character na
med Ikaris. "The Eternals" became one of the films selected for this study. The reason for cho
osing this movie as a medium is because of the politeness strategies found in the movie "The
Eternals". In “The Eternals" movie, the saga of the Eternals, a race of immortal beings who li
ved on Earth and shaped its history and civilizations. Following the events of Avengers: Endg
ame (2019), an unexpected tragedy forces the Eternals, ancient aliens who have been living o
n Earth in secret for thousands of years, out of the shadows to reunite against mankind's most
ancient enemy, the Deviants. In 5,000 BC in Babylon, earthlings are attacked by the predator
Deviants. The humanoid race of powerful Eternals are awakened in their spaceship by their cr
eator Arishem and unleashed to destroy the Deviants with their abilities. However, they are n
ot authorized to return to their ship and have to stay living on Earth for centuries. In the prese
nt days, in London, the eternal Sersi is walking near the river with her earthling boyfriend Da
ne Whitman and her friend and also eternal Sprite when they are attacked by a Deviant. Soon
the Eternals join themselves to fight the predator race that is more powerful now and they lear
n dreadful secrets about Arishem and their origins while fighting the predators.
The research question of this study is what types of positive politeness strategies are us
ed by Ikaris in "The Eternals" movie? This study is written to describe the types of positive p
oliteness strategies used by Ikaris in "The Eternals" movie.
Positive politeness is directed to the addressee’s positive face, his perennial desire that
his wants should be desirable (Brown and Levinson, 1978: 101). The linguistic realizations of
positive politeness, as illustrated on page 13, are in many ways simply representative of norm
al linguistic behavior between intimates, where interest and approval of each other's personali
ty, presuppositions indicating shared wants and shared knowledge, implicit claims to the reci
procity of obligations or reflexivity of wants, and so on are routinely exchanged.
Positive-politeness utterances are used as a metaphorical extension of intimacy to imply
common ground or sharing of wants to a limited extent, even between strangers who perceive
themselves, for the interaction, as somehow similar. For the same reason, positive-politeness t
echniques are used not only for FTA redress but also in general as a kind of social accelerator,
where S indicates that she wants to ‘come closer to H. Below is an explanation of the positiv
e politeness strategies indicators.

NO TYPES OF POSITIVE PO INDICATOR OF THE STRATEGIES

LITENESS STRATEGIES

1 Notice, attend to H (his inte Taking notice of aspects of H’s condition.

rests, wants, needs, and go
ods)

2 Exaggerate (interest, appro Exaggerated intonation, stress, and other aspects of pr

val, sympathy with the hear osodics, as well as with intensifying modifiers.
er)
3 Intensify interest to H 1) Making a good story.
2) Pulling H right into the middle of the events being
discussed.

4 Use in-group identity mark a) Including generic names and terms of address like
er mac, mate, buddy, pal, honey, dear, duckie, Luv, bab
e, Mom, blondie, brother, sister, cutie, sweetheart, gu
ys, fellas.
b) Involving any Switch from one language or dialect
to another.
c) By referring to an object with a slang term.
d) Sharing mutual knowledge.

5 Seek agreement a) Safe topics.

b) Repeating what the preceding speaker has said in a
conversation.

6 Avoid disagreement a) Pretending to agree; Speakers may go in twisting t

heir utterances to appear to agree or to hide disagree
ment - to respond to a preceding statement with ‘Yes,
but...’, rather than a blatant ‘No.’
b) Pseudo-agreement is found in English in using the
n as a conclusory marker.
c) When confronted with the necessity to state an opi
nion, S wants to lie rather than damage H’s positive f
ace.
d) S may choose to be vague about the own opinions
not to be seen to disagree.

7 Presuppose/raise/assert co a) Talking for a while about unrelated topics.

mmon ground b) Encoding point of view using deixis.
c) Using tag questions with falling intonation.
d) Using of the ‘vivid present,’ a tense shift from past
to present.
e) Using proximal rather than distal demonstratives
(here, this, rather than there, that).
f) Expecting him to assume that H’s point of view is
his or his is H’s.
g) Using the word ‘presuppose’ loosely.
h) Negative questions, which presume ‘yes’ as an ans
wer.
i) Using scalar predicates such as ‘tall.’
j) Using familiar address forms like honey or darling.
k) Using in-group codes — language, dialect, jargon,
 local terminology.

8 Joke Jokes may be used to stress that shared background o

r those shared values.

9 Assert or presuppose S’s k To assert or imply knowledge of H’s wants and willin
nowledge of and concern f gness to fit one’s wants in with them.
or H’s wants

10 Offer, promise Claiming that whatever H wants, S wants for him and
will help to obtain.

11 Be optimistic S to assume that H wants S’s wants for S and will hel
p him obtain them.

12 Include both S and H in the 1) Using an inclusive ‘we’ form, means ‘you’ or ‘m
activity e.’
2) Let’s in English is an inclusive ‘we’ form.

13 Give (or ask for) reason S to give reasons as to why he wants what he wants. I
n other words, giving reasons is a way of implying 'I
can help you' or 'you can help me', and, assuming coo
peration, a way of showing what help is needed.

14 Assume or assert reciprocit The existence of cooperation between S and H may al

y so be claimed or urged by giving evidence of reciproc
al rights or obligations obtained between S and H. Th
us, S may say, in effect, ‘I’ll do X for you if you do Y
for me,’ or ‘I did X for you last week, so you do Y for
me this week’ (or vice versa).

15 Give gifts to H (goods, sy Gift-giving, not only tangible gifts, but human-relatio
mpathy, understanding, coo ns such as—the wants to be liked, admired, cared abo
peration) ut, understood, listened to, and so on.

B. RESEARCH METHOD
Research methodology is the systematic and theoretical analysis of the processes applie
d to a field of study (Kothari (2004)). Includes techniques for describing, explaining, and pre
dicting phenomena to solve a problem; they are the "how"; the procedure or techniques for co
nducting a study. A methodology is not intended to provide solutions but rather provides theo
retical support to understand which procedure, set of procedures, can be applied to a specific
case.
 The study that used the qualitative descriptive method as a type of research. Qualitative
descriptive research generates data that describes the “who, what, and where of events or exp
eriences'' from a subjective perspective (Kim et al. (2017:23)). Qualitative description is a mu
ch-cited research tradition and has been identified as essential and appropriate for research qu
estions focused on discovering the who, what, and where of events or experiences and gatheri
ng information from informants about a poorly understood phenomenon. It is also the label of
choice when a direct description of a phenomenon is desired, or information is sought to deve
lop and refine questionnaires or interventions (Neergaard et al. (2009); Sullivan-Bolyai et al.
(2005)). Qualitative descriptive research aims to describe, explain, and answer the problems t
o be studied by studying an individual, a group, or an event as much as possible. It can be con
cluded that a descriptive qualitative method is one way to describe and discuss the phenomen
on. This method was chosen because of a social phenomenon in The Eternals movie. It can b
e analyzed the choice of positive politeness strategies used by Ikaris using a descriptive meth
od. In addition, the result of this analysis was presented in words.

C. ANALYSIS
After the analysis that has been done on the movie’s script of The Eternals, there are fiv
e utterances containing positive politeness strategies used by Ikaris that include both S and H
in the activity.

Data 18
Ikaris: We need to find the others. (See Appendix 3 scene 122 act 26)

In the sentence "we need to find the others," There is a form of the word "we" that can
be categorized as part of including both S and H in the activity because S means 'you' or 'me,'
he can use cooperative assumptions and thus improve the FTA. And also, S (Ikaris) invites H
(Sprite and Sersi) to find the others because they think it is essential to come together to find
a solution to fight the deviant. Because The Deviants appear again after a long time, they wer
e killed by The Eternals about five centuries ago.

Data 19
Ikaris: I'm sorry I hurt you, Sersi. But we need to stick together. And once I know you're safe.
I'll leave you alone. (See Appendix 3 scene 125 act 26)

In the sentence "we need to stick together." There is a form of the word "we," which is
categorized as part of including S and H in the activity because S means 'you' or 'I,' he can us
e cooperative assumptions and thus increase FTA. Also, S (Ikaris) is worried about H (Sersi).
Because S left H for so long, and after S returned, S asked H to stay together so S could prote
ct H from Deviant’s behavior.

Data 24
Ikaris: I promise I won't let my feelings for Sersi distract me from my mission. Humans are fa
r from being able to protect themselves from the Deviants. We still have much to do. (See Ap
pendix 3 scene 181 act 38)

From the sentence "we still have much to do," there is a form of the word "we" that can
be categorized as part of including both S and H in the activity because S means 'you' or 'me,'
he can use cooperative assumptions and thus improve the FTA. And also, S (Ikaris) thought h
umans need to be protected from Deviants and invited H to do that. After all, humans cannot
defend themselves from those Deviants.

Data 33
Ikaris: We need to talk. (See Appendix 3 scene 274 act 59)

From the phrase "we need to talk", there is a form of the word "we" that could be categ
orized as part of including S and H in the activity since S means 'you' or 'I'; it can use coopera
tive assumptions and thus increase FTA. In addition, S (Ikaris) invited H (Kingo) to talk beca
use there is something important to talk about Deviant reappearing and Ajak, who has died du
e to being attacked by Deviant.

Data 48

Ikaris : We need to go. Now. Find the others. Once we’re all together, we’ll decide what to do
about the emergence. (See Appendix 3 scene 411 act 86)
 In the sentence "we need to go", there is a form of the word "we" that could be categori
zed as part of including both S and H in the activity because S means 'you' or 'me,' he could u
se cooperative assumptions and thus improve the FTA. In addition, S (Ikaris) invited H (The
Eternals) to find the others because they thought it is essential to come together and find a sol
ution to discuss what to do about the emergence of Celestial.

D. CONCLUSION
From the data analysis, the types of positive politeness strategies employed by Ikaris in
“The Eternals” movie is strategy 12, include both S and H in the activity.

Besides, it also can be concluded that this strategy is redirected to the hearer’s positive f
ace. People try to increase familiarity, narrow the power gap, and use more informal language.
It is usually seen in groups of friends or where people in the given social situation know each
other reasonably well. It usually tries to minimize the distance between them by expressing fr
iendliness and substantial interest in the hearer’s need to be respected (minimize the FTA).

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