wishes

The article examines ‘well-wishes’ as a speech genre that was initially borrowed from direct communication, but transformed over time and is now functioning in the web environment in the form of pictures or drawings containing poetic and prosaic texts, GIF animations, videos, slide shows of static images replacing each other and accompanied by music, as well as audio files (audio postcards or voice greetings).

The article presents an overview of research literature on the etiquettical conventional speech genre “wish” in Russian and foreign linguistics. The author compares definitions of the lexeme “wish” in various lexicographic sources, considers researchers’ approaches to determining the status of a wish and identifies some debatable problems of studying the genre. Particular attention is paid to the consideration of wishes within the theory of speech acts and the theory of speech genres.