@article{oai:nagoya.repo.nii.ac.jp:00006359,
 author = {Swissdy, Miyashita},
 journal = {ことばの科学},
 month = {Dec},
 note = {The research described in this paper was undertaken to find out why it is difficult for Singaporean learners to switch from one linguistic form to the other between the da and desu/masu forms when they converse in Japanese. It first makes a cross-cultural comparison of the ways politeness is perceived differently in the Japanese and Singaporean sociolinguistic systems of language use. This is done through the study of requests for a pen in Japanese and in Singaporean English, a method based on Hill et al. (1986).1 The paper then looks at how the view of politeness in the native sociolinguistic milieu may affect the sentence-end switching between the da and desu/masu in the case of Singaporean learner’s performance in Japanese conversations when encountering various changes in the level of addressee. To study this effect, this paper contrasts the learner’s role-play conversations in situations where the addressee’s level is the same but the language differs between English (the native language)2 and Japanese (the foreign language). From the findings of this investigation, it is hoped that suggestions can be derived for classroom instruction in the Japanese language.},
 pages = {135--158},
 title = {The Mastering of the Da and Desu/Masu Forms in Spoken Japanese by Singaporean Learners of Japanese: Cultural Attitudes Toward Level of Politeness and Their Effect on Language},
 volume = {15},
 year = {2002}
}