ELICITING SPEECH-ACT DATA IN JAPANESE - THE EFFECT OF QUESTIONNAIRE TYPE

Speech act theory has greatly influenced both the study and teaching o f language use; however, given its philosophical roots, it has been sh ort on empirical support. In recent years numerous speech act studies have been conducted. In these studies, though, there has been little d iscussion of research methodology, specifically data collection techni ques. 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 que stionnaires (MCQs), designed to elicit requests, to two groups of 36 J apanese female undergraduates. As with Rose (1994), there were signifi cant differences in most situations (11 of 12), with those completing the MCQ choosing to opt out or hint more frequently than those complet ing 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.