Section: «Congratulations, wishes»

Congratulations are an expressive speech act, a genre of epideictic speech, a polite expression of one's own joy and sympathy for the addressee on the occasion of a joyful event for the addressee ("Happy birthday!"). The purpose of congratulations is to evoke a positive emotional response in the addressee in order to maintain the necessary tone in the relationship. Like other typical acts, congratulations are associated with generally accepted norms of behavior and have stable methods of expression. A successful congratulation differs from a compliment in that it describes a real state of affairs or an event favorable to the addressee and in sincerity (when social norms evaluate the event as positive for both the addressee and the speaker).