POLITENESS EXPRESSIONS IN ANIME HANASAKU IROHA

This study focuses on politeness expressions found in Japanese Animation “Hansaku Iroha” by using Japanese culture, Leech’s maxim of politeness, and Holmes’ social dimension. Politeness is forms of behaviour that establish and maintain comity. Maxims of politeness is a number of maxims dealing with polite behavior. The maxims that operate in politeness principle are tact maxim, generosity maxim, approbation maxim, modesty maxim, agreement maxim, and sympathy maxim. Japanese language has a system to express politeness, and Japanese animation includes this system. This research aims to answer the following questions: (1) how is politeness expressed by the main characters in the anime? ; And (2) what are the purposes of their politeness?
This study is conducted using qualitative method. The source of data in this study is the first five episode of anime entitled Hanasaku Iroha The data are the utterances of the main characters in the anime that contain the politeness expressions.
From 19 data that are found from the anime, it is shown that the characters in the anime express politeness using suffix –san when addressing others, they also use respect language to speak politely, besides that, their politeness also follows Leech’s maxim of politeness. All of the six maxims can be found in the anime. The result also shows that their politeness have purposes. The first one is to maintain harmony between characters. The next is to show social distance. The third one is to distinct the status among characters, and the last one is to show formality.