An overview of research methods in speech acts and politeness. The case for triangulation

Abstract

The aim of this methodological paper is to present an overview of research methods in speech act and politeness research, providing evidence in support of the triangulation approach (Jucker 2009; 2018). By taking research on politeness and speech acts as an example, I show that the respective advantages of different qualitative and quantitative methods such as corpus methods, roleplays, and interviews, are in fact complementary. Different research methods should be combined in the research design in order for the reliability and validity of the research tool to be increased and a fuller understanding of various pragmatic phenomena to be obtained.