Eliciting Speech Act Data in Japanese: The Effect of Questionnaire Type

Speech act theory has greatly influenced both the study and teaching of language use; however, given its philosophical roots, it has been short on empirical support. In recent years numerous speech act studies have been conducted. In these studies, though, there has been little discussion of research methodology, specifically data collection techniques. This paper reports the results of a study (based on Rose, 1994), which addresses methodological validation in speech act research. We administered discourse‐completion tests (DCTs) and multiple‐choice questionnaires (MCQs), designed to elicit requests, to two groups of 36 Japanese female undergraduates. As with Rose (1994), there were significant differences in most situations (11 of 12), with those completing the MCQ choosing to opt out or hint more frequently than those completing the DCT. These results seem to indicate some serious problems with DCTs, which need to be addressed if they are to be used in speech act studies.