EN
The authors focused primarily on a typical act of politeness i.e., congratulations as understood and verbalized by the students of secondary schools. They were mostly interested in student’s answers to the following questions: Can students construct the correct definition of this notion? What advantages, apart from giving pleasure to the person who receives congratulations, does the sender want to achieve by using utterances of this kind? Can one congratulate against oneself, insincerely? Consequently, the definitions of the lexeme created by secondary school students underwent careful scrutiny, and also the addressee of congratulations, the reasons for expressing the words of praise as well as the intentions of congratulating, which can be very different: from demonstrating admiration for the attainments of the allocutor, through motivating them for further efforts, until the desire to achieve one’s own aims and awaiting reciprocity.