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Politeness is quite important in communication. This makes communication smoothly, and even helps us to build a good relationship. But if the politeness is lack or less in speech, it would cause miscommunication like misunderstanding. However, many Japanese textbooks have some problems about this point. For example, most of responses in dialogues are ”sodesuka( I see. )”. This makes the researcher wonder if native speakers really response like this in this situation, and it became the research motive. This research has two surveys: textbook survey and questionnaire survey. The textbook survey is the comparison of two kind of Japanese textbooks and actual conversation. From this survey, author found out that most of “sodesuka” is used without any interjections in dialogues, and also, filler words seldom appeared. These make dialogues unnatural or impolite. About the questionnaire survey, its purpose is to understand how native Japanese speakers think the dialogues which the researcher found incorrect, and how they answer in these situations. By their answers, it is possible to get suggested answers for each dialogue, then examine the usage of “sodesuka” in each situation from the aspect of Politeness. This questionnaire survey was also conducted to Taiwanese learners, in order to figure out how much they understand Japanese politeness. From this survey, the researcher got two results below: 1) When the speaker use “sodesuka” without any interjections, but if he has a certain intention to do so, this type of usage also correct. However, it is not easy for learners to distinguish these differences, this is a problem for teaching. 2) “sodesuka” has two-layer in the structure of politeness strategy. Outer layer are “Interjections(A)” and “Comments for the speaker(B)”, and inner layer is an expression of B. Each of the outer layer is “utterance element”, the A means “the listener pays attention to the speaker”, the B emphasizes the listener’s interests to the speaker or what he spoke. When an utterance has these two elements, it can be regarded as considering the person he is speaking to. In addition, the politeness strategy of inner layer plays a role in transferring the speaker’s intention to the listener much correctly. Therefore, the researcher thinks that teaching one meaning of the word is not enough, making learners understand its meanings and usages in each situation is necessary. This helps them to decrease possibility of miscommunication.
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