A Comparative Study Of DCTs And Role Plays: An Empirical Investigation

Data elicitation methods are of paramount importance in pragmatics studies. The results of the whole study will be threatened if inappropriate methods are employed. The thesis gave a picture of a continuum of data elicitation methods. The paper mainly introduced DCT and role play, since these two methods enjoy popularity in data elicitation of pragmatics studies. It reviewed the previous studies on these two methods. Triggered by the limitations in the previous studies, the present study attempted to compare their differences in data elicitation and find the applications of both methods in interlangauge pragmatic studies in particular. To provide a theoretical base for the study, a coding scheme in CCSARP was introduced and some studies about request were reviewed.The study investigated these two techniques by comparing the oral and written responses of 247 students in making requests. Strict controls were put on selection of subjects and requests construction. The data were analyzed by the coding scheme in CCSARP and were compared in terms of request length, request strategy types, internal and external modifications of head act, request perspectives, and turns of request.The results revealed that there were some differences in terms of request strategy types and linguistic forms between these two methods; however, the differences were not apparent. The two methods differed greatly in data length. Role play response was much longer than that in DCTs. In addition, role play possessed oral speech features. It allowed for interaction and could give more hints of the speaker when he was speaking, such as his intonation, his attitudes and so on. However, compared with DCTs, it was more time consuming to transcribe and sort out role play data.The study provided some insights about applications in interlanguage pragmatics study. Both DCTs and role plays could be adopted to investigate English user's strategies and the linguistic forms in making request as well as their sensitivity of contextual variations. An integration of both methods was also suggested. Role plays could serve to gather primary data and DCTs could be used in extensive studies to test the hypothesized interactions derived from role play. The study also warned researchers to be cautious of contextual construction in cross situation studies and gave some suggestions for future teaching. Another suggestion was a side issue of this study. It could be inferred from the present study that current teaching material and teaching methods have helped students familiarize with some basic expressions to realize certain speech act. However, more strategies could be introduced to enhance their communicative ability.Recognizing the limitation of the findings in present study, the study also called for in-depth researches with more contextual variation and across different speech acts among different subjects to test the findings about the comparisons of DCTs and role plays.