Propositional and Pragmatic Discrepancies of Gratitude Behaviour in English and Bulgarian Debate Shows
Propositional and Pragmatic Discrepancies of Gratitude Behaviour in English and Bulgarian Debate Shows

Summary/Abstract: The article focuses on the communicative acts of gratitude, when displayed in a debate interactive format, demonstrated by interlocutors who are native speakers of English and Bulgarian. It further considers the direct and indirect utterances preferred by the two groups of speakers with respect to the exploited performative entries (grateful, gratitude, thank, thankful, thanks, appreciate) in English and their variants in Bulgarian (blagodarya, blagodaren, blagodarnost, otsenyavam, tsenya).The paper mainly dwells on the semantic differences identified in the comparative analysis between the two sets of performative entries and the discrepancies which occur at a locutionary level (prepositional and propositional), which refer to the relations between the benefactor, the beneficiary and the beneficence. Additionally, the indirect acts of gratitude are also examined, which accompany the performative utterances and shape the illocutionary (intended) perspective of the exact individual chain of gratitude expressions. There are certain disparities, primarily in the choice of indirect utterances (indicating positive emotions, expressing wishes, indicating the need for the beneficence, etc.) and the direction of illocutionary force, either expressive, commissive or/and assertive.

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