Japanese Learners' Indexical Uses of the da Style in a Study Abroad Setting

This study explores five high-intermediate Japanese as a Foreign Language (JFL) learners' shifts from the desu/masu to da style in daily conversations with their host families during their respective study abroad, which varied from five to eight weeks in length. The main focus is on how often and in what contexts learners shift, whether these shifts are consistent with indexical uses of the da style and what might be affecting students' use of the da style. The data show that shifts for negotiation moves and subordinate clauses were most frequent and functioned as discourse organizers, indexing subordinate or tangential information. Although few in number, shifts for adjectives that indexed private expression were the most natural and target-like. Further, shifts for adjectives with the particle ne and random/anomalous instances of da-style shifts suggested that learners might have been attempting to extend their da style to include the use of sentence final particles (SFPs) or to different contexts. The findings further suggest that there is a progression of da-style use and that learners' beliefs, the quality and type of their interactions with their host families, and the use of SFPs affect learners' use and acquisition of the da style.