INVESTIGATING POLITENESS STRATEGIES DURING UNCOUPLING PROCESS OF INTERRACIAL RELATIONSHIP
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International Journal of Early Childhood Special Education (INT-JECSE)
DOI: 10.9756/INT-JECSE/V14I1.193 ISSN: 1308-5581 Vol 14, Issue 01 2022 PP: 1620-1628
INVESTIGATING POLITENESS STRATEGIES
DURING UNCOUPLING PROCESS OF INTERRACIAL
RELATIONSHIP
Received: 05.01.2022 Accepted: 10.03.2022
Atichat Rungswang1, Krishna Kosashunhanan2*
1
Faculty of Liberal Arts, King Mongkut‟s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Thailand
2
Faculty of Liberal Arts, Rajamangala University of Technology Thanyaburi, Thailand
1
Email: atichat.ru@kmitl.ac.th, 2 krishna_k@rmutt.ac.th
ABSTRACT: Uncoupling seems to be a difficult task since we do not want to hurt other‟s feeling. People
always seek their ways to politely end up their relationship in order to minimize some negative effects that may
happen during or after ending process. Therefore, this study aims to investigate politeness strategies used in
breakup messages of interracial couple. Leech (2005)‟s politeness strategies including Tact maxim, Generosity
maxim, Approbation maxim, Modesty maxim, Agreement maxim, and Sympathy maxim, together with
Goffman (1967)‟s the notion of face were used as frameworks to analyze the breakup messages during
uncoupling process between a Thai woman and a French man. The messages were divided into two series; pre-
breakup and post-breakup messages. The results revealed that Thai woman, during pre-breakup process, mostly
obey Tact Maxim. At the same time, she violated Tact Maxim and Approbation Maxim. She, in her post-
breakup process, mostly employed Modesty Maxim to uncouple her boyfriend. For a French man, he differently
used politeness strategies to react to her girlfriend‟s statements. Noticeably, power was shifted during
uncoupling process.
INDEX TERMS: Break up messages, Face-Threatening Acts (FTAs), Interracial relationship, Politeness
Strategies
1. INTRODUCTION
Our world has changed so much from the past. Since the internet has been introduced, it facilitates our life to be
much easier. [1] explained that the internet has changed the way of communication, for example, in business
communication, sending documents via e-mail replaces a fax machine or a postman and people start to
communicate globally. This then makes our world smaller. This process becomes a world‟s phenomenon called
„globalization‟. Globalization is the process of integrating people from various countries, nations, cultures and
governments into one world melting pot. The process is driven by the economics of free market capitalist
economy, international trade and investment. It represents a merger of the developed world with the developing
world [2].
Globalization has developed many branches of technology, especially communication. Technology of
communication has been consistently invented, for instance, internet, telecommunications, broadband, cell phone
technology, and handheld wireless mobile devices. It connects people around the world together. When people get
in touch easier, there are some cultural conflicts emerging. Cultural differences such as way of life, belief, attitude,
or even language can cause misunderstandings between communicators. However, globalization has made global
communication easier. We can see people on the other side of the world as a neighbor, instead of a stranger from a
faraway land [3]. When we are able to contact people easier, the romantic relationship can‟t be avoided and then it
becomes an interracial relationship. Interracial relationship is a relationship among two people coming from
different race. Sometimes, such a difference can obstruct the relationship. More often problems are found due to
long distance relationships and cultural differences. People, sometimes, try to maintain cultural identities with their
interlocutors even in their romantic relationship.
Cultures and expectations from both people might be interracial relationship problems. When people have different
cultures, they communicate differently. Interracial partner could interpret what another one is saying or doing.
1620International Journal of Early Childhood Special Education (INT-JECSE)
DOI: 10.9756/INT-JECSE/V14I1.193 ISSN: 1308-5581 Vol 14, Issue 01 2022 PP: 1620-1628
They might emote differently than he or she means it. One may think he or she is expressing love, yet their partner
might hesitate what another one really wants to say. Indeed, gender difference may be one element of the
relationship‟s issues. Women and men have different styles and strategies of talking. [4] said that the women's
speech in English is identified to be hesitations. She also argued that it was affected from the sense of inferiority.
Within the domain of day-today conversation, it seems that a woman‟s role is to sustain and support conversation,
while men have more power to control and define who speaks and what gets talked about [5]. This can cause a
conflict and then might ruin a relationship which possibly leads to an end. We all know that ending up is harder. It
can have either a bad or happy ending. In terms of interracial relationships, the difference of cultures has certain
different ways to breakup. When they are ending their relationship, they, normally, either blame each other or
accept it as their fault. Because of this the power between the couple will be exercised based on either hatred or
politeness strategies. For this study, the researchers are interested in how the couple manipulated politeness
strategies over each other as well as investigating power play during the breaking up process.
2. RESEARCH OBJECTIVES AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS
The objectives of this research article were 1) to investigate how politeness strategies are manipulated in interracial
couple, and 2) investigate how power is shifted during the breaking up process. The research questions were also
presented as follow:
1) What are politeness strategies used during the uncoupling process?
2) How is power shifted during the uncoupling process?
3. LITERATURE REVIEW
A. The Notion of Face and Face-Threatening Acts
The theory of politeness of Brown and Levinson was first published in 1978 and then reissued with a long
introduction in 1987. In their work, they assume that every individual of society has a public self-image or „face‟.
This notion of face is based on [6], who defines face as “positive social value a person effectively claims for
himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact” (p. 5). [7] form the face in two aspects,
positive face and negative face. The latter is defined as the want to be independent and not imposed on by others. It
is associated with the formal politeness that is often evoked by the term politeness [7]. Positive face is less obvious,
and it expresses the want to be accepted and appreciated, to be treated as a member of the same group, and to know
that one´s wants are shared by others [8]. They also mention FTAs (Face-threatening acts). FTAs are acts that
threaten someone‟s face. FTAs include acts such as accusations, insults, interruptions, complaints, disagreements
or requests. A disagreement threatens the positive face, because of the fact that it implies a lack of acceptance for
the hearer´s opinions. Thus, [7] work on four politeness strategies that will deal with FTAs in case it cannot be
avoided: bald on record, negative politeness, positive politeness, and off-record-indirect strategy. The bald on
record strategy is doing nothing to minimize threats to the hearer's face. Negative politeness strategy is recognizing
the hearer's face, but it also admits that you are in some way imposing on others. Positive politeness strategy is
showing you recognize that your hearer has a face to be respected. It also confirms that the relationship is friendly
and expresses group reciprocity. Lastly, off record strategy is left up to the hearer to infer the implicated meaning.
Therefore, this strategy minimizes the threat most successfully; however, the speaker risks being misunderstood
and failure to communicate the FTA.
B. Leech’s politeness principles
There are two versions of the politeness principle which are proposed by [9][10]. In this study, the data will be
analyzed by politeness principles in the version of [9] because the scope of [10] version has too many details for
this study. [10] proposes that there are two sorts of politeness scale: (1) absolute politeness scale, and (2) relative
politeness scale. The first one is about degrees of politeness. Absolute politeness is unidirectional and can be
changed by degree in terms of lexigrammatic form and semantic interpretation of the expression. Relative
politeness relates to norms in a given society, for a given group, or for a given situation. This kind is bi-directional
1621International Journal of Early Childhood Special Education (INT-JECSE)
DOI: 10.9756/INT-JECSE/V14I1.193 ISSN: 1308-5581 Vol 14, Issue 01 2022 PP: 1620-1628
and is rather sensitive to the context it occurs within [11]. Meanwhile, the conversation in this study is just
messages. The couple did not face each other. Moreover, no cross-cultural and social norms were obviously
implicated in the messages. [9] proposes sub-principles (maxims) which relate to a particular part of speech
situation for example, generosity typically applies to commissive, tact to directives, approbation to compliments,
and so on. Therefore, [9] is the appropriate framework that will be used to analyze the data in this study.
According to [9], the politeness principles (PP) help explain details which cooperative principles are unexplained,
especially why people are indirect about what they intend to say. [9] proposes six maxims consisting of Tact
maxim, Generosity maxim, Approbation maxim, Modesty maxim, Agreement maxim, and Sympathy maxim. The
details of each maxim are elaborated in Table 1. From the principles‟ explanation, it can be seen that the
framework itself proposes the goals in order to explore the relationship between interlocutors.
Table 1 Leech’s politeness principles
C. Research into politeness principles
Politeness principles have been actively employed as a framework in academic area. In 2015, Atuti conducted a
research entitled The Analysis of Approbation Maxims Based on Leech’s Politeness Principles in The Novel
Entitled Five on a Treasure Island. Atuti said that “Five on A Treasure Island” is a British popular children‟s book
by Enid Blyton. The story is about the adventure of Julian, Dick, Anne, their niece George and her dog Timothy in
a treasure island, Kirrin Island. This research used the principle of politeness of Geoffrey Leech and investigated if
they used particular strategies in expressing the objective of their messages. The result showed that most of the
character use approbation maxim in their messages. In 2017, Duangkot proposed a research named Politeness at
Work: Analysis of a Job Application Letter with Leech’s Principles of Politeness. This research study is about to
describe and analyze the element of a sample letter by using principle of politeness which was proposed by [9].
Duangkhot used a sample data from Kiana Johnson‟s job application letter to apply to the Assistant Safety
Supervisor position at CUNA Mutual Insurance. She found that Modesty and Approbation maxims were displayed
in a letter. Meanwhile, Tact maxim was included in the interpretation part. This research paper used politeness of
principles to analyze a job application letter. In the same year, [12] conducted a research entitled An Analysis on
Politeness Principle Used by Students in Research in English Language Teaching 1 in Classrooms Discussion (A
Study for the sixth semester of IAIN Salatiga in the Academic Year of 2016/2017). The study analyzed politeness in
students by using the politeness principle of Leech as an analyzed tool. The researcher wanted to find out that
students use the politeness principle in the classroom and the maxim that is used by students the most.
Additionally, this research used participants in English Language Teaching 1 classes in the English Education
Department of IAIN Salatiga. The result showed that every maxim was used and the most dominant maxim that is
used in students is Agreement maxim. As you can see in the previous studies, it seems that there is no study
exploring Leech‟s politeness principles in interracial relationship. To fill the gap, this study, therefore, aims to
investigate politeness strategies used in uncoupling process of interracial relationship.
1622International Journal of Early Childhood Special Education (INT-JECSE)
DOI: 10.9756/INT-JECSE/V14I1.193 ISSN: 1308-5581 Vol 14, Issue 01 2022 PP: 1620-1628
4. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
A. Data
The data were texting messages between interracial couple, Thai woman and French man, using English language
in the conversation through Facebook application. The situation is during the uncoupling process. The
conversations are divided into two series of breaking up processes: pre-breaking up and post-breaking up. Besides
that, the owners of texting messages are anonymous. Examples of conversations are shown below.
Fig.1 Examples of pre-breaking up messages
B. Data Analysis
The data were analyzed by six maxims of [9]. They were separated into two parts: pre-breaking up and post-
breaking up. The researchers scrutinized and analyzed and identified the maxims used in the messages of two parts.
After the analyzing procedure, the results of two parts were compared to see how power was shifted during
uncoupling process of interracial relationship.
5. RESEARCH RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
A. Research Question 1: What are politeness strategies used during the uncoupling process?
From two series of messages: pre-breakup messages and post-breakup messages, the politeness strategies that were
used during the breakup process included Tact Maxim, Generosity Maxim, Approbation Maxim, Modesty Maxim,
Agreement Maxim, and Sympathy Maxim. The details were portrayed below
1623International Journal of Early Childhood Special Education (INT-JECSE)
DOI: 10.9756/INT-JECSE/V14I1.193 ISSN: 1308-5581 Vol 14, Issue 01 2022 PP: 1620-1628
Table 1 The use of Tact Maxim during pre-and post-breakup messages
From Table 1, pre-breakup process, the Thai woman obeyed Tact maxim for 7 times and violated Tact maxim for 4
times which imply that she might not want to impose her ex-boyfriend, but she still wanted the answer. The French
man obeyed Tact maxim 1 time and also violated this maxim 1 time. It can be assumed that the man did not want
to harm the woman‟s feelings, but he did not know what to do. After they broke up, the woman obeyed the maxim
1 times and did not violate. She might pretend to be happy with friends to make sure that her messages did not
disturb the man. The man obeyed the maxim 2 times to apologize and not to ruin the woman‟s feelings.
According to Table 2 below, it was found that the two series of breakup messages employed Generosity maxim. In
the pre-breakup process, the woman did not say things to obey the maxim, but she violated the maxim 4 times.
She might believe that she did not do anything wrong as she asked “Did I make something wrong?”. Moreover, the
woman‟s message that said “Being bossy is not my way. I just want to know deeply”, it seems that she was being
boss at that time and her messages were against the rules of Generosity maxim. On the other hand, the man obeyed
1 time and violated the maxim for 2 times. As he said, “But I‟ve always tried to do my best”, although he tried to
do his best, he still made the woman upset. In the post- breakup process, the man and woman did not obey the
maxim and the woman violated the maxim 1 time. As she said “I‟ll be fine soon just need time” might imply that at
that time she was not fine because of the man‟s action which could oppress the man‟s feelings. The man also
violated 2 times.
1624International Journal of Early Childhood Special Education (INT-JECSE)
DOI: 10.9756/INT-JECSE/V14I1.193 ISSN: 1308-5581 Vol 14, Issue 01 2022 PP: 1620-1628
Table 2 The use of Generosity Maxim during pre-and post-breakup messages
When considering the use of Approbation maxim, it was found that during two series of breaking up processes, the
woman violated the maxim in the pre-breakup process for 4 times. The messages seem to be sarcastic about him
and his girl. Meanwhile, the man obeyed 1 time to express how he regrets what he has done. After they broke up,
no one used Approbation maxim. The details were presented in Table 3.
Table 3 The use of Approbation Maxim during pre-and post-breakup messages
1625International Journal of Early Childhood Special Education (INT-JECSE)
DOI: 10.9756/INT-JECSE/V14I1.193 ISSN: 1308-5581 Vol 14, Issue 01 2022 PP: 1620-1628
For Modesty maxim, no one violated Modesty maxim from both two series of breaking up. The woman obeyed the
maxim 1 time. She said “… something is not quite important” which implies that she did not want to disturb the
man. Furthermore, the man obeyed the maxim 2 times. He said sorry in both messages. In the post-breakup
process, the woman obeyed Modesty maxim for 5 times and the man obeyed 1 time. As shown in Table 4, all
messages followed the maxim because both of them blamed themselves or it could be said that they minimized
praise to themselves which follow the rules of Modesty maxim.
Table 4 The use of Modesty Maxim during pre-and post-breakup messages
For Agreement maxim, the couple did not use Agreement maxim much. As presented in Table 5, they only obeyed
the maxim each 1 time in the pre-breakup process. In a breakup situation, many couples might have negative
feelings toward each other, agreement or understanding each other is a previous step before breaking up.
Table 5 The use of Agreement Maxim during pre-and post-breakup messages
For Sympathy maxim, as shown in Table 6, the woman didn‟t use Sympathy maxim in pre-and post-breakup
messages, but the man obeyed 1 time in pre-breakup process and 4 times in post-breakup process because a
situation in this whole conversation, the man seems to be.
1626International Journal of Early Childhood Special Education (INT-JECSE)
DOI: 10.9756/INT-JECSE/V14I1.193 ISSN: 1308-5581 Vol 14, Issue 01 2022 PP: 1620-1628
Table 6 The use of Sympathy Maxim during pre-and post-breakup messages
B. Research Question 2: How is power shifted during the uncoupling process?
The results from the pre-breakup process demonstrate that the woman is more powerful than the man because she
can violate Tact maxim 4 times by saying “I just want to know and wish you could give me some answers…” , “It
isn‟t worth remembering at all?”, “The time you were with me it wasn‟t memorable?” , and “Ok, it‟s your turn to
give me some points”. It contradicts Tact maxim because the purpose of what she said is to force the man to
answer or to give benefit to herself. Moreover, the woman was being sarcastic by saying “In case you have the new
one, will you still afraid to tell her the truth or you decide to hide it again in order to not get her upset”, and “In
your case as you mentioned your ex is quite fragile so I guess you are not able to do like me”. Those words violate
Approbation maxim because it can be implied that she maximized dispraise of other which is against the rules in
Approbation maxim.
However, the power was less powerful after they broke up. The woman violated Generosity maxim only 1 time but
she obeyed Modesty maxim the most by saying that “Don‟t worry u didn‟t do anything wrong but it‟s me”, “I
could not stop thinking of you”, “Speaking frankly, I still got the same feeling with you. I tried to ignore, tried to
stop chatting, tried not to think too much but I couldn‟t”, “The point is I just want to be back „the old me, the happy
me‟ and I think it‟s would be better if I stop everything like seeing or chatting and it would help me to forget and
back to my place”, and “Sorry for being like a dump girl you have ever seen but I don‟t know what to do”. It can
be indicated that she was blaming herself in order not to disturb the man. The conversation was clear that they
already broke up, but she still missed him.
On the other hand, there is no strong power from the man‟s messages because in this conversation, the man seems
to be accused by the woman that he was cheating. Before they broke up, he had violated tact maxim by saying “I‟m
not proud of this, and I just want to forget it” and he also violated Generosity maxim by saying “I sincerely hope
you understand me.” It implies that the man felt guilty and did not know what to do. After they broke up, the man
violated Generosity maxim by saying “But I do not feel ready anymore to be in relationship” and “Things are
going fast around me and I‟m not ready yet for being in a long term relationship” but he tried to compromise by
using Sympathy maxim by saying “So I‟m not saying goodbye anyway. Take care of you bew”
It can be seen that factors that influence the conversations leading to power shift are the differences of gender and
nationality. People who come from different culture have their own ways of thinking, attitude and conversational
style. Therefore, what we have found in this study might not be generalized to another context. However, this can
be a starting point of conversation analysis of interracial couple during uncoupling process.
1627International Journal of Early Childhood Special Education (INT-JECSE)
DOI: 10.9756/INT-JECSE/V14I1.193 ISSN: 1308-5581 Vol 14, Issue 01 2022 PP: 1620-1628
6. CONCLUSION
From two series of breakup messages, 6 maxims are all used by the interracial couple. Agreement maxim is the
least use of all maxims. In the pre-breakup process, Thai woman employed Tact maxim the most. After they broke
up, the woman used Modesty maxim the most. She obeyed the maxim 5 times. In post-breakup messages,
Sympathy maxim that was used by French man can be seen obviously. He used Sympathy maxim 4 times in order
to compromise the woman.
Moreover, the power during the messages was shifted between the pre-breakup process and post-breakup process
by the woman. She obeyed Tact maxim 7 times and also violated 4 times at the same time. She was powerful in the
pre-breakup process and turned to be soft after the broke up. Modesty maxim was used the most by the woman
because she knew that they had already broken up but she still missed her ex-boyfriend.
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