Data Collection Methods

A wide range of data collection methods have been used in speech act studies, including interviews, rating tasks, multiple-choice questionnaires, DCTs open and closed role-plays and authentic discourse observation (Gabriele Kasper & Merete Dahl, 1991, p. 217). While interviews, rating tasks and multiple-choice questionnaires are often used for pragmatic perception and comprehension research, DCTs, and open and closed RPTs are commonly employed in pragmatic production studies (Gabriele Kasper & Merete Dahl, 1991, p. 217). It can be safely stated that there is no completely right or wrong method for collecting data, as each has unique strengths and weaknesses. For example, although an observation of authentic discourse could be considered the most accurate and desirable method, it might also be the most difficult to use, especially in a limited project such as a PhD study. It is also

challenging to control for age groups, social relations, power status, educational levels, gender and many other variables that influence authentic discourse. In addition, DCTs or open RPTs, for example, in certain cases, might be preferred to authentic discourse, as the latter offers fewer deliberate contextual variables affecting speech.

DCTs have been extensively used to elicit speech act realizations, since Blum-Kulka (1982) first used them in the field of ILP. This method can be considered an appropriate elicitation method, which can yield relevant pragmalinguistic data in the form of speech acts, especially in specific contexts, such as EFL contexts where naturally occurring data cannot be gathered, is inaccessible, or has proven very hard to collect (Nelson et al., 2002). As the social situations and contextual variables in DCTs can be easily controlled and manipulated, in a study such as this one, they are preferable to naturally-occurring data (Schauer & Adolphs, 2006, p. 131). Furthermore, DCTs are broadly seen to provide model or stereotypical responses for spontaneous speech, and thus reflect informants’ pragmatic norms (Beebe & Cummings, 1996). Data obtained through DCTs has also been seen to both represent pragmatic norms (Hinkel, 1997) and to reflect learners’ pragmatic competence (Al-Eryani, 2007), which is precisely what the current study focuses on. As this study also aims to examine potential differences between two different groups of English learners in terms of their level of directness and the pragmatic modification strategies used for requests and refusals, the DCT is ideal, as it supports the gathering of pragmalinguistic features, enabling “the collection of formulas and strategies which reflect the content of formulas or strategies used in everyday speech and which are comparable across cultures and languages” (Barron, 2003, p. 84).

Arguably, however, DCTs can produce more formal responses than participants might expect in reality, as writing is generally perceived as a more formal activity than speaking (Rintell & Mitchell, 1989). Indeed, in DCTs participants might sometimes produce artificial, unnatural and more formal responses than they would normally do, in reality this is mainly

because they might tend to “bias the response toward less negotiation, less hedging, less repetition, less elaboration, less variety and ultimately less talk” (Beebe, 1985, p. 3). Therefore, open RPTs were also adopted for this research as a complementary data-gathering tool, to compensate for deficiencies in the DCTs and thereby enhance the validity of the study, since open RPTs require interaction between interlocutors.

Nonetheless, DCTs and RPTs share many common features, such allowing the researcher to tightly control contextual variables, such as the age or status of the interlocutors, and the fact that the tools used are easily replicable in different contexts at different times, differing from ethnographic studies. Furthermore, DCTs and RPTs can also reveal participants’ accumulated experience concerning a given situation. For the above-mentioned reasons, DCTs and RPTs have been widely used in studies of ILP, and have been found to be useful and appropriate. In addition the integration of both the DCT and RPT in a single study strengthens the research design, adding to the overall methodological robustness of the current study. However, despite the above-mentioned advantages of using DCTs and open RPTs, several drawbacks also need to be reflected upon. Indeed, such methods can put participants in hypothetical situations where there are no negative consequences for producing unnatural utterances. Therefore, to address this challenge, and limit the participants’ reliance on their imagination, the scenarios used in this study were intended to accurately reflect scenarios in both British and Saudi cultural contexts.

Finally, it is worth mentioning here that the weaknesses and limitations of DCTs and RPTs have been studied and discussed in several previous works, although relatively little attention has been paid to the limitations of natural data collection methods (Beebe & Cummings, 1996, p. 80). In this respect, Beebe and Cummings (1996, p. 80) declared “many studies on natural data have not given speech samples that represent an identifiable group of speakers and do not give situational controls”, and consequently, “sufficient instances of cross-linguistically and cross-culturally comparable data are difficult to collect through

observation of authentic conversation” (Gabriele Kasper & Merete Dahl, 1991, p. 245). Thus, DCTs and RPTs remain a viable choice for researchers, in the absence of a better alternative.

3.4.1 Discourse-Completion Tasks (DCTs)

The DCTs used in this study were arranged into two parts: (1) nine unfinished request scenarios, and (2) nine unfinished refusal scenarios. For each scenario, the participants were provided with a specific social situation and a conversational gap, for them to add what they would say in the given situation. The scenarios were intended to be as realistic as possible, and applicable to both British and Saudi cultural contexts, to limit the participants’ reliance on their imaginations. The language of the questionnaire itself was also intended to be simple and clear, as ambiguity might cause different participants to interpret the tasks differently, producing unreliable data (see appendix 1). All nine request scenarios in the DCT varied in terms of both degree of imposition (low/high) and the interlocutor’s status (lower/equal/higher) as these two constraints had been reported in previous studies as influencing the pragmatic strategies employed.

LOW IMPOSITION HIGH IMPOSITION

Lower status

Requesting students step aside from the door

Requesting help from a busy student Requesting a valuable book from a student

Equal status

Asking for directions Requesting that another student fill out your long questionnaire

Requesting a book with high monetary value from a classmate

Higher status

Requesting a professor open the window

Requesting that a very busy professor reschedule a crucial meeting with you

Requesting a book with high monetary value from a lecturer

Table 3.2 The classification of the 9 request scenarios in accordance with the two variables

The nine refusal scenarios presented in the DCT also varied in terms of the degree of imposition (refusing offers and invitations and refusing requests), and in the interlocutor’s status (lower/equal/higher), as these two variables had been identified in previous studies as having an impact on how participants express refusals.

Refusing Offers and Invitations (LOW) Refusing Requests (HIGH) Lower

status Refusing your student’s offer of a drink Refusing a worker’s request to use your car Equal

status

Refusing a friend’s invitation to the beach

Refusing a colleague’s request to use your laptop

Refusing a friend’s offer of a drink

Higher status

Refusing your boss’ invitation to have dinner together

Refusing a lecturer’s request to help with the freshers week orientation

Refusing your boss’ offer of drink Refusing to help with choosing books

Table 3.3 The classification of the 9 refusal scenarios in accordance with the two variables The following extract gives two examples of a request and refusal in a DCT scenario:

Scenario (1): You have a crucial meeting with your professor this Wednesday, but you cannot attend for

some reason. This is the second time this has happened this month. You need to ask your professor to reschedule your meeting. You say: “………”

Scenario (2): Your colleague’s laptop has been infected by a virus while downloading files from the

company’s website. He has tried some new anti-virus software, but it is not sufficiently effective. Then, he asks for your laptop to finish the work. However, you decline his request.

Colleague: “Oh!! I have to finish these files today. Can I use your laptop please?”

You: “……….…….…………..………”

In scenario (1), the respondent (a student of lower status) has to ask their professor (higher status) to reschedule a crucial meeting for the second time (high imposition). There is a high social distance between the student and the professor. However, in scenario (2), the respondent and his/her colleague have equal status. The respondent needs to refuse his or her friend’s request to use the laptop. All the DCT scenarios were developed and modified purely for the purpose of this study (see appendix 1), although several of the scenarios are similar to those used in previous studies (e.g. Bardovi-Harlig & Dornyei, 1998).

3.4.2 Open Role-play Tasks (RPTs)

For the RPTs, pairs of participants were given cards with descriptions detailing unfinished scenarios. In each of the scenarios, one student had to request something and the

other student has to refuse it, following the guidelines on the card (see appendix 2). The conversations were audio recorded and students given a few minutes to prepare before the recording. Similarly to the DTCs, the request and refusal scenarios in RPTs covered different levels of imposition and specified social status. Examples from the RPT scenarios are presented below:

Card 1 (requesting from a worker): You work in a coffee shop as a manager. You are outside your shop

calling your mother, and your mobile phone battery dies before she has finished speaking. You enter the shop and ask one of your workers if you can use his or her mobile phone so you can call your mother back (who lives in the same city) for only one minute.

Your Role: You ask a worker if you can use his or her mobile phone.

Card 2 (refusing a request from a manager): You work in a coffee shop. You are waiting for a very

important call this morning. You put your mobile phone in front of you and keep checking it regularly. Your manager is outside calling someone on the phone, they then enter and asks for your mobile to make a short call. You have to refuse your manager’s request.

Your Role: You listen to your manager’s request and you will have to refuse it.

In the above interactive scenario, the first participant is of a higher status (the manager) and must ask one of his workers (lower status) to borrow his/her mobile phone, while the second participant (the worker) is awaiting a call and so has to refuse the manager’s request.

When participants engage in a RPT, they are permitted to speak at length, to ensure there is sufficient space for interaction to take place between the interlocutors in a way that is close to reality and authentic discourse. On this subject, Turnbull (2001), for example, compared the results of refusals from written and oral DCTs, open RPTs and authentic discourse. He found that data from written and oral DCTs differed from that for open RPTs and naturally occurring results, namely a wider range of pragmatic features emerged during open RPTs, producing more natural utterances. Once the material has been collected, the next stage is to code it to allow for analysis. Section 3.5 presents the coding schemes employed in this thesis.