This study focuses on analyzing the perception of politeness in requests by EFL
leraners. This study aim at 1) describes the perception of the learners for the
politeness in requests in some different social situation produced by Indonesian
EFL learners, 2) describe the different perception of politeness used in request
between males and females , 3) classified the reasons provided by Indonesian EFL
students to judge politeness used in requests. This research applies descriptive
qualitative method in which the research participants were fourty Indonesian EFL
learners in Muhammadiyah Universty of Surakarta. The data were the perception
of politeness used in request which provided in three scale polite, impolite and I
don’t know. The way to collect data is using documentation and questionare form
of DCT (Discourse Completion Task) scenarios. The subject of this research were
taken through a random sampling technique consisting of 40 students comprising
20 males and 20 females participants who were in seventh semester. The writer
analyzed the data by using politeness theory by Brown and Levinson (1987),
impoliteness theory by Culpeper (2010), and the last request theoty by Trosborg
(1995).
The result show that there were perceptions to judge politeness used in requests
which provided by Indonesian EFL learners, the students regarded that indirect
request included polite and direct request was considered impolite. The difference
perception also happened between males and females to make judgements.
Female had better perception about politeness on request than male because in
mostly DCT female have more confidence to judge whether the utterance of
request polite or impolite. But, male prefer to not make judgements in politeness
request. The writer found several reasons to judge politeness, there were fourteen
kinds of reasons which provided by Indonesian EFL learners. It could be seen
total of the reasons, Word choice as 35,86%, modal verb as 16,53%, habitual
action as 7,78%, distance as 10,97%, strategy of request as 4,72%, type of
sentence as 5,69%, emotion as 2,5%, right as 0,83%, intonation as 4,86%,
exclamatory mark as 2,08%, expression of face as 0,14%, culture as 0,55%,
attention getter as 0,14%, and condition as 0,42%. In fact, there were some
students doesn’t give reason because the participants not sure whether the request
polite or impolite
