MEANS OF EXPRESSING GRATITUDE IN ENGLISH AND BULGARIAN – PRAGMATIC DIMENSIONS

The paper investigates different ways and means of indicating gratitude exploited in English and Bulgarian. It basically focuses on a number of thanking situations, strategies and expressions with respect to use, politeness orientation and specificities. A division is further made between thanks, appreciation and gratitude. The aim of the article is to present the English patterns of speech acts of thanking in context-dependent speech situations and the challenges to learners when being exposed to input settings similar to the linguistic reality of the target community. The paper also dwells on the disparities and inaccuracies which may occur between the learners’ native pragmatic knowledge and the expressions of gratitude which are most likely to be uttered by native speakers of English.