Dankbarkeit vs Hoflichkeit und sprachliche routine

The aim of the present study is to describe the similarities and differences in using thank formulas in the analysed languages. The pragmatic, semantic and syntactic perspectives as well as some cultural aspects of thanking have been taken into consideration. Furthermore, a detailed analysis of thanking in two corpora of Swedish telephone conversations, with special regard to their endings, is given. In the analysis of using Swedish thank formulas it is possible to observe a tendency of reduction: the formulas are short and hackneyed. The rejoinder to the act of thanking is in Swedish very often an act of thanking. Polish and German formulas are much more often expanded, which points to a qualitative character of redundance in these languages. The reccurence of Swedish thank formulas, which can be observed in telephone closings, makes it possible to characterize the Swedish redundance as quantitative. Reciprocal thanking equalises the asymmetric character of the relation between sender and recipient. This can be treated as a linguistic manifestation of emphasizing equality - which is a pre-eminant value in Swedish culture. It favours communicating symmetry, equal importance and reciprocity.