Pragmatics Research Methods

Abstract

This entry presents an overview of the different research methods (i.e., data collection and data analysis procedures) used in pragmatics research. Given that various theoretical approaches within pragmatics employ similar data collection and data analysis procedures, this entry is not organized by theoretical approach but by the research methods available. The section on data collection procedures is divided into three parts: it first discusses observational data collection procedures such as recordings of naturally occurring interaction, field observations, and field notes. Next it turns to a discussion of elicited data collection procedures such as interviews and story elicitation, role plays, and discourse completion tasks. And lastly, it discusses experimental data elicitation procedures. For each data collection procedure, we briefly explain how researchers proceed in order to collect the data and mention some of the advantages and disadvantages of each method. The entry concludes with a description of the types of analyses that can be done on the different types of data collected. These types of analyses fall into either qualitative or quantitative analysis paradigms.