Politeness Strategies in Indonesian Motivational Podcast: An Interactional-Pragmatic Analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33394/jollt.v14i4.20496Keywords:
Politeness strategies, Interaction pragmatics, Relational work, Podcast discourse, CyberpagmaticsAbstract
The growing popularity of podcasts has created new forms of digitally mediated spoken interaction in which speakers must manage both co-present interlocutors and wider unseen audiences. However, politeness in Indonesian podcast discourse, particularly in face-sensitive financial advice, remains underexplored. This study investigates how politeness is pragmatically accomplished in the Indonesian motivational podcast Suara Berkelas when speakers discuss financially sensitive issues. Employing a qualitative interactional-pragmatic single-case design, the study analyzes five purposively selected excerpts from Episode 86. The analysis draws on Brown and Levinson’s face model, relational work, rapport management, and cyberpragmatics. The findings reveal that politeness is realized not primarily through conventional courtesy markers but through interactional strategies including third-party narratives, anticipatory mitigation, generalized social typing, quoted speech, analogy, irony, and moral reframing. These strategies enable speakers to criticize, warn, and advise while mitigating face threats and maintaining relational alignment and public credibility. The findings further demonstrate a dual audience orientation, as speakers simultaneously engage a co-present interlocutor and an unseen digital audience. In the Indonesian context, this orientation becomes particularly salient when financial advice intersects with family hierarchy, social image, and expectations of generosity. The study contributes to interactional pragmatics by showing how politeness in podcast discourse operates as dynamic relational work shaped by face sensitivity, cultural expectations, and digitally mediated audience design.
References
Anwar, M., Amir, F. R., Zuhriyah, S. A., Purbasari, R., & Rosa, H. T. (2024). Language Impoliteness in Memes Contesting the 2024 Presidential Election in Indonesia. Journal of Languages and Language Teaching, 12(4), 1899. https://doi.org/10.33394/jollt.v12i4.12801
Ardhianti, M., Susilo, J., Nurjamin, A., & Prawoto, E. C. (2023). Hedges and Boosters in Student Scientific Articles within the Framework of a Pragmatic Metadiscourse. Journal of Languages and Language Teaching, 11(4), 626. https://doi.org/10.33394/jollt.v11i4.9018
Arundale, R. B. (2006). Face as relational and interactional: A communication framework for research on face, facework, and politeness. Journal of Politeness Research, 2(2), 193–216. https://doi.org/10.1515/PR.2006.011
Bardovi-Harlig, K., & Dörnyei, Z. (1998). Do language learners recognize pragmatic violations? Pragmatic versus grammatical awareness in instructed L2 learning. TESOL Quarterly, 32(2), 233–262. https://doi.org/10.2307/3587583
Belcher, D. D. (2023). Digital genres: What they are, what they do, and why we need to better understand them. English for Specific Purposes, 70, 33–43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2022.11.003
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge University Press.
Dynel, M. (2021). Participation frameworks in digital discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 182, 85–99. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2021.05.003
Dynel, M. (2023). Participation frameworks and audience design in digital discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 207, 90–104. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2023.03.005
Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, P., & Sifianou, M. (2019). Im/politeness and discursive pragmatics. Journal of Pragmatics, 145, 91–101. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2019.03.015
Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behavior. Anchor Books.
Fatmawati, F., & Ningsih, R. (2024). Politeness in Expressive Speech Acts: A Cyber Pragmatics Approach. Journal of Languages and Language Teaching, 12(4), 1721. https://doi.org/10.33394/jollt.v12i4.12620
Haugh, M. (2024). (Im)politeness as object, (im)politeness as perspective. Journal of Politeness Research, 20(1), 201–226. https://doi.org/10.1515/pr-2023-0082
Herring, S. C. (2013). Discourse in Web 2.0: Familiar, reconfigured, and emergent. In D. Tannen & A. M. Trester (Eds.), Discourse 2.0: Language and new media (pp. 1–25). Georgetown University Press.
Insyra, Z. S., & Supri, I. Z. (2024). Pragmatics Analysis of Directive Illocutionary Acts in Spider-Man: No Way Home Movie. English Journal Literacy Utama, 8(2), 152–162. https://doi.org/10.33197/ejlutama.v8i2.259
Kádár, D. Z., & Haugh, M. (2013). Understanding politeness. Cambridge University Press.
Liu, L., & Jiang, F. (2024). Podcasting science: Rhetorical moves and interactional metadiscourse in the Nature Podcast. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 71, Article 101419. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2024.101419
Locher, M. A., & Watts, R. J. (2005). Politeness theory and relational work. Journal of Politeness Research, 1(1), 9–33. https://doi.org/10.1515/jplr.2005.1.1.9
Lu, R. (2025). Understanding online advice-giving evaluations through the politeness evaluation model. Journal of Politeness Research, 21(1), 249–287. https://doi.org/10.1515/pr-2023-0068
Oyadiji, O. (2020). Politeness in the interactions of selected Nigerian news-based virtual communities. Discourse & Communication, 14(2), 175–201. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750481319890388
Parvaresh, V., & Tayebi, T. (2018). Impoliteness, aggression and the moral order. Journal of Pragmatics, 132, 91–107. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2018.05.010
Qian, D. D., & Pan, M. (2019). Politeness in Business Communication: Investigating English Modal Sequences in Chinese Learners’ Letter Writing. RELC Journal, 50(1), 20–36. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033688217730142
Rahmayanti, I., Rokhman, F., Mardikantoro, H. B., & Pristiwati, R. (2025). Language, strategy, and influence: A pragmatic analysis of Indonesian YouTube influencers. Cogent Arts & Humanities, 12(1), Article 2531180. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2025.2531180
Rina, N., Yanti, Y., & Idham, H. (2020). Implicature in the internet memes: Semiopragmatics analysis. Journal of Cultura and Lingua, 1(1), 27–35. https://doi.org/10.37301/culingua.v1i1.7
Spencer-Oatey, H. (2008). Culturally speaking: Culture, communication and politeness theory (2nd ed.). Continuum.
Taguchi, N. (2011). Teaching pragmatics. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 31, 289–310. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0267190511000018
Tai, H.-Y., & Chen, Y.-S. (2021). L2 proficiency and pragmatic comprehension. Education Sciences, 11(4), Article 174. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci11040174
Taguchi, N., & Kim, Y. (2016). Collaborative Dialogue in Learning Pragmatics: Pragmatic-Related Episodes as an Opportunity for Learning Request-Making. Applied Linguistics, 37(3), 416–437. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amu039
Yanti, Y., Thamrin, T., Hasan, D. C., Izmayanti, D. K., Irma, I., & Pramujiono, A. (2026). Bald on record strategy and politeness in cyber political communication: A pragmatic analysis of speech in the 2024 Indonesian presidential election. KEMBARA: Jurnal Keilmuan Bahasa, Sastra, dan Pengajarannya, 12(1), 59–73. https://doi.org/10.22219/kembara.v12i1.42196
Yus, F. (2011). Cyberpragmatics: Internet-mediated communication in context. John Benjamins.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
Citation Check
License
Copyright (c) 2026 khatimun Nisa Urasida Urasida, Setiono Sugiharto, Yusrita Yanti
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
License and Publishing Agreement
In submitting the manuscript to the journal, the authors certify that:
- They are authorized by their co-authors to enter into these arrangements.
- The work described has not been formally published before, except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture, review, thesis, or overlay journal.
- That it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere,
- That its publication has been approved by all the author(s) and by the responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – of the institutes where the work has been carried out.
- They secure the right to reproduce any material that has already been published or copyrighted elsewhere.
- They agree to the following license and publishing agreement.
Copyright
Authors who publish with JOLLT Journal of Languages and Language Teaching agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-SA 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.
Licensing for Data Publication
-
Open Data Commons Attribution License, http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/by/1.0/ (default)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
