Gender-Based Politeness Strategies in Student and Lecturer Communication through WhatsApp

This research aimed to describe the politeness strategies applied by the first semester of English Department Students of Medan State University based on Brown and Levinson politeness strategies theory. This research was carried out by employing qualitative research with textual analysis. The population of this research was the first semester of English Department Students of Medan State University in academic year 2020/2021. The data were collected by WhatsApp messages sent by students. The results of this study showed that the dominant strategy used by the English students in texting their lecturer was Negative Politeness. There were 38 students used Negative Politeness. The second position is Bald on Record that was used by 2 students. Negative Politeness strategy gets the dominant used in the data findings. Most of the students still have awareness about politeness when they want to speak or start the conversation with other people. They tend to use this category in line with Indonesian culture that emphasized with formal language use when converse with older people like lecturer or teacher.