Publication Details
Abstract
Congratulatory and well-wishing speech acts are organized not only by their semantic content but also by a distinctive sound–phonetic patterning that carries their emotional force and aesthetic value. This study offers a contrastive analysis of the phonetic realization of congratulations and wishes in English and Uzbek, two languages whose phonological systems differ typologically. Drawing on a corpus of English and Uzbek congratulatory texts, the analysis examines alliteration, assonance, rhyme, vowel harmony and phonetic parallelism. The results show that English congratulations rely predominantly on rhyme, rhythm, alliteration and assonance, whereas Uzbek congratulations are shaped by vowel harmony, alliteration, melodiousness and parallelism. The findings support the view that etiquette speech acts are phonetically motivated and function as culturally shaped formulae.