Discourse completion tasks

The present chapter examines Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs), a data elicitation method that generates large amounts of contextually varied and comparable cross-linguistic speech act data, used predominantly in cross-cultural and interlanguage pragmatics. It discusses different features of DCT design, including the formulation of scenarios, the incorporation of social variables, and format choice. The chapter then reviews studies comparing DCTs to other data elicitation methods and to naturally occurring data. It shows that while the different data collection methods generate similar speech act realisation strategies, the reported differences – mainly regarding directness, mitigation, and politeness marking – are largely inconclusive, with the results depending on the speech acts and groups of speakers under study.