Introduction surveys the previous treatments of these response particles, both in dictionaries, and Japanese textbooks, also those by Japanese grammarians particularly Kitagawa and Hinata. We highlight the reasons why these treatments are inadequate, noting especially their failure to distinguish between semantic and socio-pragmatic influences. In addition we al so describe a 1 so our methodo l ogi cal approach . Chapter 1 introduces the notions of speaker and addressee orientedness . This

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... n forms the basis of a sub-categorization of the r·esponse particles that is e 1ementary to our analysis. !n Chapter 2 we analyse the speaker-oriented response particles aa and un and attempt to explicate their semantic components . In Chapter 3 we analyse the addressee-oriented response particles hai, haa and ee and attempt to explicate their semantic components. In Chapter 4 we view the semantic components (described in Chapters 2 and 3), in terms of such socio-pragmatic features as age , gender, roles etc . While we considered it crucial that semantic and soc i o-pragm at i c components are treated independently it is our intent ion in this chapter to finally present meanings of the response particles based on both semantic and socio-pragmatic aspects of their usage .