Studying Compliment Responses: A Comparison of DCTs and Recordings of Naturally Occurring Talk

Abstract

This article provides a detailed study of the differences between compliment responses collected with two different data collection procedures: naturally occurring data analysed through conversation analytic (CA) methodology, and elicited data collected via a discourse completion task (DCT). The DCT was designed to evoke the same discourse context and preceding cotext observed in the naturally occurring data. The article demonstrates that these data collection procedures do not always yield data that speak equally well to given research questions. It is argued that recording naturally occurring talk‐in‐interaction enables the researcher to study how language is organized and realized in natural settings, whereas responses from data elicitation procedures such as DCTs indirectly reflect the sum of prior experience with language. Additionally, the article discusses advantages and disadvantages of data collection procedures including questionnaires, recall protocols, role play, field observation, and recordings of naturally occurring talk‐in‐interaction. The article concludes by discussing the feasibility of generalizing findings generated from the aforementioned data‐collection instruments.