... & Wolfson, 1 981 ; Wolfson, 1 989 ); replace greeting/ gratitude/ apologies/congratulations (Wolfson, 1 983 , 1 989 ); open and sustain conversation (conversation strategy) (Wolfson, 1 983 ; Billmyer, ... 1.1.5. Expressing gratitude as a speech actBasing on the classification above, it can be concluded that expressing gratitude is an expressive act. This is the reason Wiezbicka (1 987 ) put it ... than as “I am grateful to you” (Wiezbicka, 1 987 : 214). Sharing the above-mentioned view, Eisestein & Bodman (1 986 , 1993) state that expressing gratitude is performed by a set of speech acts...