AN ANALYSIS OF DEBATERS AVOIDANCE COMMUNICATION STRATEGY: A CASE STUDY AT TELEVISE ENGLISH DEBATE COMPETITION

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the avoidance strategy of debaters in televised English Debate Competition by classifying the utterances of the debaters based on the avoidance communication strategy proposed by Celce Murcia, et. al (1995). The sources of the data in this research were the utterances from the debaters in the video uploaded by TVRI NTB’s youtube channel and other supporting data from previous researchers. The data were collected by using qualitative interview, qualitative audiovisual, and digital material strategy and analysed by using the method suggested by Miles & Huberman (1994) which consist of data reduction, data display, explaining, and drawing conclusion. The result of this study shows that there were 48 utterances that can be classified as avoidance communication strategies which involved 6 debaters. The debaters used message replacement, topic avoidance, and message abandonment. And there were four factors influencing the use of the strategy, those are cultural differences, limited preparations, lack of confidence, and deal with big challenge.