The Journal of Studies in Language ISSN:1225-4770(Print) 2671-6151(Online) 언어연구

The purpose of this study is to investigate the different types of politeness strategies that were used in the context of different utterance relationships during a television debate. The 2016 Brexit BBC debate was chosen for the data analysis. When communicating in debate, people use different politeness strategies related to ‘utterance relationships’ in different contexts. Three different utterance relationships were found during the debate: Audience vs Debate panel, Leave vs Remain panel, Moderator vs Panels. A total of 766 thought units were analyzed based on Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness strategies and placed into three utterance relationships. The results showed that positive politeness strategy was the highest strategy in most utterance relationships. However, people used the positive politeness strategy differently amongst the different utterance relationships. The panels overwhelmingly used the positive strategy toward the audience. However, the differences in each strategy were not significant when the debaters directly interacted in the debate. The role of the moderator was crucial in a debate of this great scale and the positive strategy was used more than any other to save the debaters' face. The research confirms that the different strategies are needed in conversations by different utterance relationships due to the unbalanced power between speakers and hearers and it is difficult to engage in Face Threatening Acts (FTA) even though each panel is on a completely different side when communicating in public.