Schedule 18. Sprachwissenschaftliche Tagung für Promotionsstudierende

The task of a standalone researcher is not an easy one: We are often underfunded, left to collect data without university assistance and receive little help in the grueling chore of analyzing said data. This often poses a hurdle for collecting (especially oral) data from a large pool of partic- ipants. In this talk, I therefore plan to present an elicitation method in development aimed at collecting oral data and reducing both a researcher’s data collection and analysis time: virtual reality discourse completion tasks.

The discourse completion task (DCT) is a time-tested elicitation method used extensively. It has been varied in myriad different ways, can be administered orally or written and is designed to elicit a desired speech act. However, the DCT has also been subject to criticism due to (1) its inability to capture as rich of data as roleplays or interviews and (2) its reliance on learners imagination of a realistic situation given a few contextual clues, after which they should ver- balize the sought-after speech act (cf. Billmyer/Varghese 2000). Overcoming these criticisms would mean a large methodological advancement in the field of (second) language acquisition. A feasible solution appears to be integrating virtual reality (VR). With VR, learners are im- mersed into a realistic, pre-recorded situation in which they interact directly with an interlo- cuter whose questions and responses have been extensively piloted to elicit particular speech from the participant.

In this talk, I will present my current VR material in its developmental stage. It is tailored to collect data on learners’ varietal behavior (1) whilst interacting directly with dialect-speaking and standard German-speaking interlocuters and (2) in differing constellations of social dis- tance and dominance. Furthermore, in having the pre-recorded interlocuter pose qualitatively- aimed questions (e.g. in the spirit of virtual reality oral dialogue construction DCT (cf. Bar- dovi-Harlig/Hartford 1993)), it is also to be examined in how far a VR DCT might also be regarded as an ecological substitute for ethnographic/sociolinguistic interviews. In a final step, I will discuss possible pitfalls of the method (e.g. preventing dizziness in and accustoming participants to VR).

There remains yet a lack of methodological approaches to accommodate standalone researchers tackling empirical topics. By constructing ecologically valid elicitation settings with pre-rec- orded interlocuters in the form of VR, researchers can drastically reduce the time needed for the data collection process and time-consuming analyses (e.g. transcribing large amounts of data from interviews), thus in turn possibly allowing standalone researchers access to larger pools of participants.

References

Billmyer, Kristine & Manka Varghese (2000): Investigating instrument-based pragmatic variability: Effects of enhancing discourse completion tests. Applied Linguistics 21(1). 517–552.
Bardovi-Harlig, Kathleen & Beverly S. Hartford (1993): Refining the DCTs: Comparing open questionnaires and dialogue completion tests. In Lawrence Bouton & Yamuna Kachru (Hrsg.), Pragmatics and Language Learning, Selected papers presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Conference on Pragmatics and Language Learning, 143–165. 4. edn. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Info

Day: 2021-09-24
Start time: 14:10
Duration: 00:40
Room: Don Giovanni

Language: en

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