POWER DIFFERENCES IN DETERMINING POLITENESS IN ENGLISH

This descriptive qualitative research deals with politeness strategies used by students in expressing expressive speech acts to lecturer’s power differences. It specifically focused to describe the types of politenss strategies which were used by students in expressing expressive speech acts, to explain how those types were realized the way they were and to find out the reason why the types are realized as the way they are. The data were taken from written Dicourse Completion task (wDCT) and interview. It was taken by administrating the questionnare and by using recorder in STKIP Tapanuli Selatan Padangsidimpuan. The findings showed that all types of politeness strategies were applied in expressive speech acts to the female lecturers. However, off record was not used by students to male lecturer. The studnts used negative politeness frequently to female lecturers. It was used because the students want to save lecturer’s face, to pay respect to the way of female lecturers speak. While, they used positive politeness fequently to male lecturer because the students want to bulid close relationship to the lecturer. All these happened because they really adapted with t he personality’s of the lecturers. This personality tends to gender. So gender becomes the dominant factor in determining politeness strateies in expressing expressive speech acts.