National and cultural features of the speech act congratulations in the modern German language (compared to Russian)

Abstract

The proposed paper analyzes the features of the speech act congratulation in modern German in comparison with Russian. The author proceeds from the understanding of etiquette speech acts as representatives of the communicative category politeness, characterizes these phenomena as socially conditioned, changeable and, as a result, requiring repeated study. The purpose of the article is the comparative consideration of congratulation in informal communication in German and Russian. The tasks of the work include a review of available research papers on the issue, a comparative description of congratulations in two nationalcultural communities taking into account traditions and customs of the people and the specifics of language units. The dictionary platforms of the German, authentic didactic resources and examples from the author’s personal correspondence are used as practical material. An analysis of the semantic and syntactic properties of the performatives constituting the speech act congratulation in both languages allows to draw conclusions regarding the use of etiquette formulas in close connection with a holidays certain category: in contrast of the Russian verb поздравлять, the German verb gratulieren is used in congratulations on personal events of the addressee, at that time how congratulations on state or church holidays are good wishes, expressed by nominal phrases. The novelty of the research lies also in addressing the issues of stereotyping and modification of the semantic meanings of particular holidays in German culture, emerging of new significant occasions under the influence of democratization processes in society, due to the spread of political correctness ideas, which determines the relevance of the corresponding congratulatory phrases.