Akty podziękowania w treści polsko- i rosyjskojęzycznych wiadomości przesyłanych na kartach pocztowych

The purpose of this article is to analyze speech acts of thanking used in Polish and Russian postcard messages. The paper addresses several aspects of speech acts of thanking: 1) their location in message structure, 2) their formal and pragmatic characteristics, 3) speech acts co-constituting thanking formulas, and 4) actions making speakers perform acts of thanking. The analysis leads to the conclusion that the form and/or content of speech acts of thanking might be determined by the national culture, the gender of interaction participants, the type of relationship between them and the medium by which they are sent.