A Pragmatic Study of Congratulation Strategies of Pakistani ESL Learners and British English Speakers

People usually express their feelings and emotions positively to others when they have happy occasions. However, the ways of expressing congratulation may vary because the expressive speech act “congratulations” is not the only way to express happiness and share others their happy news. The present study investigates the congratulation strategies of Pakistani ESL learners and British English speakers under the inuence of social distance variable. For this purpose, 120 participants were recruited, and who were further divided into four different groups: 30 British English speakers, 30 Pakistani ESL learners in the elite class, 30 Pakistani ESL learners of the middle class, and 30 Pakistani ESL learners in the lower class. For data collection, a Discourse completion test (DCT) was used as a tool. The ndings reveal that the most frequently used types of congratulation strategy are IFID followed by overlapped strategies (a combination of two), an offer of a good wish, expression of happiness, request for information, encouragement, expression of surprise, and suggestion of celebration, while other types of strategies are not used by the participants. The study reveals the existence of positive and negative pragmatic transfer in the use of congratulations by Pakistani ESL learners. The ndings further show how the middle and lower class of Pakistani ESL learners use a more elaborated form of CRs as compared to Pakistani ESL learners of elite and British English speakers. The ndings may help in understanding the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic aspects of Pakistani ESL learners as compared to British English speakers.


Introduction
Learning English as a lingua franca (LF) has become an important aspect of one's life to keep pace with the world in this era of globalization. Learning of the target culture language (Taguchi, 2008(Taguchi, , 2011(Taguchi, , 2015a 2015b, 2019; Taguchi & Roever, 2017) does not mean to equip oneself with the grammar of the second language (competence) but it also demands performance (the use of the knowledge of the second language). Due to the recent shift from grammatical competence to communicative competence, the interest of researchers has increased in the area of pragmatics research, especially focusing on speech acts (Youn et al., 2019). It has been observed that Pakistani ESL learners lack pragmatic competence, though they have achieved grammatical (mpetence ( Lodhi & Akash, 2019) of L2 at an advanced level they are still unable to avoid transferring their L1 knowledge to L2 production. A number of Pakistani scholars (Azam & Saleem, 2018aSaleem et al., 2018) have pointed out that the English language within the Pakistani educational context is regarded as a subject in spite of a particular language; due to which, no speci c importance is given to this particular issue and not accounted so far.
Further, it is observed that Pakistani ESL learners urgently need to develop both pragmaligistic and sociopragmatic resources (Saleem et al., 2021) because the new concept of the world has been constructed that is based on the developed resources such as modern technology and mobilization.
Given that in this era of technology and social media, non-native speakers of English need to achieve the mastery of grammatical competence as well as communicative competence to make one capable of producing an act in different cultures in an appropriate way (Lee, 2020; Mohd et al., 2020; Vassilaki & Selimis, 2020). Previous studies (Chen, 2020;Malmir & Derakhshan, 2020) have indicated that communicative competence is considered as the central concept in the achievement of information and perception of cultural norms of a particular community which in turn bequeath the cultural apprehension that can be achieved with the investigation of communication activities within a peculiar setting. It has been pointed out by scholars that when speakers communicate in a second/foreign language, they may apply the rules and certain norms of their own respective language's sociocultural behaviors which are considered as a pragmatic transfer so that they can achieve the same purposes ( According to Allami and Naeimi (2011), studies related to the investigation of different speech acts have pointed out that the realization of speech acts varies from language to language and culture to culture regarding their semantic and contextual perspectives. Moreover, Taguchi (2017) pointed out that speech acts are regarded as one of the most researchable areas of pragmatics due to the ambiguous relationship that is formed between reference and inference. Therefore, the realization of communicative acts is said to be successful because it consists of the sociolinguistic and sociocultural capabilities of the speakers.
While studying speech acts, the concept of pragmatic transfer (PT) within the eld of Interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) has gained the interest of researchers (Han, 2020). The concept is based on two assumptions due to which it has gained so much popularity in the study of speech acts. The First fundamental assumption of PT states that the use of a second language by an ESL learner is greatly in uenced by the learners' native language. While the second assumption states that the occurrence of pragmatic transfer is based on the return of ESL/EFL learners towards their native language (Dawson, 2020;Kasper & Rose, 2002;Tsuchiya, 2020).
There are a number of studies that are carried out related to speech acts within the ILP research context (Martín-Laguna, 2020; Pearson & Hasler-Barker, 2020; Tereszkiewicz, 2020; Zhang, 2020). These studies investigated the speech acts of refusal, greeting, thanking, apologies, congratulations, and through their ndings, the researchers claim that the major problem faced by ESL speakers during acquiring pragmatic competence is that the speech acts are extremely complicated, and vary in nature and function (Bartłomiejczyk, 2020

Literature Review
The studies conducted in the area of speech acts fall within binary mainstreams: (a) the studies in which the researchers tried to analyze the communicative act in a particular social setting (e.g., Alkhatib, 1997, congratulatory behavior of a speaker in respect of decoded information in the newspaper) while on the other hand, are those which particularly take into account the notion of similarities and differences in the comprehension and production of congratulation speech act with respect to particular ethnology (e.g., the study related to Greek civilization conducted by Tsilipakou; Wierzbicka, the study on Australian arts and sciences). A small number of these studies focused on congratulations solely (Marki-Tsilipakou, 2001), while others focused on comparing it with other linguistic acts (e.g., Congratulation and bravo). In addition to these studies, there were conducted some studies which dealt with the analysis of congratulation, nevertheless, these studies provided less detail (e.g., Haddad, 2005).
Given that one of the earlier studies (Al-Khatib, 1997) related to the concept of sociopragmatic extension of congratulator behavior was investigated on the occasion of holidays in Iran and particular on happy events, in which an individual performs the act of congratulations. According to this research, people have some holidays such as Ramadan, in which people visit their relatives and offer congratulation to each other by using different congratulation expressions such as "congratulate someone on the eve of a particular festive, "I hope you may live long". They also long for health, prosperity and good fortune for one another (Allami & Nekouzadeh, 2011).
Eventually, a number of studies have been carried out on the speech act of congratulation in various contexts. Yet congratulations are a relatively understudied speech act (Wardat & Alkhateeb, 2020). In what follows, those studies are taken up. Al-Zubaidi (2017) studied the genre of Iraqi wedding invitation cards, their textual and visual components, and the effect of sociocultural norms and assumptions on the production of those components. Analyzing 250 wedding invitation cards, the researchers found that Iraqi cards vary in their nonlinguistic features like printed form, colors, and calligraphy and that the organizational structure of these cards was greatly affected by Islamic religious beliefs and Iraqi sociocultural norms and values.
In another study, Joseph and Alexander (2018) carried out a study to cross-linguistically investigate wedding practices and bridal motivations in the Southern culture of America and the Keralite culture of India. They look upon the cross-cultural divergences and/or commonalities between the American and Indian cultures. Findings indicate trends of personalization within weddings, appropriation of responsibility of the bride and the groom, existence of consistent stress exchanged for ultimate relief and comfort, and familial involvement.
Recently, Wardat and Alkhateeb (2020) studied the congratulation strategies in Syrians' wedding parties in Jordan. A discourse completion test is used for data collection. The results show that Syrians use exaggeration in their strategy of congratulations, and they like to express their happiness to the two brides. Results also show that Syrians avoid asking about private issues and avoid joking at their wedding parties. Furthermore, the results show no difference between males and females in using politeness strategies in Syrians' wedding parties. In another recent study, Avazpour (2020) focuses on the cross-cultural analysis of congratulations in American English, Indian English, and Peninsular Spanish. The current study also utilizes a discourse completion test (DCT) for data collection. The results indicate that different strategies are applied by the groups depending on the situation and/or variables. For instance, North Americans and Spaniards are more likely to express happiness and Indians are more likely to offer good wishes. Similarly, Lect and Abdulkhaleq (2020) studied the congratulation responses in Iraqi Arabic. For data collection, a DCT is used. Major ndings indicate that there are different response strategies used in the Iraqi Arabic congratulation responses, there are positive politeness strategies more frequently used than others, and nally, males and females employ similar congratulation response strategies but with varying frequencies and realizations.
Since, the literature review shows that there are many scholars who studied congratulations in many , but there has been no study carried out regarding interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) to investigate the impact of social distance on the realization of Pakistani ESL Learners pragmatic transfer compared to British English speakers congratulation strategies. In the present study, the social distance variable is divided into three categories or levels (close/familiar, neutral/intimate, and distant/stranger). The rst category involves those who have close social distance and the second category involving those who have neutral social distance, while the third category involves those who have a distant social relation (Wolfson, 1986). Such a study will ll a gap in related literature.

Research Methodology
The current study focused on the investigation of pragmatic transfer in the congratulation strategies of Pakistani ESL learners. The study followed a quantitative research design in accordance with the disposition of facts and gures, data collection, and data analysis procedures. For data collection, a discourse completion test (DCT) was used as a research tool for data collection. The collected data was accustomed to the numerical investigation. The participants of this study were Pakistani ESL learners and British English speakers.

Participants
The participants of the current study were 120 participants, divided into four different groups; 30 participants in each group: (a) 30 British English speakers (NES), (b) 30 Pakistani ESL learners in Elite class (PESL/EC), (c) 30 Pakistani ESL learners from the middle class (PESL/MC) and (d) 30 Pakistani ESL learners in the lower class (PESL/LC). The British English speakers were selected from University of Leeds, and the University of Manchester, UK. Pakistani ESL learners in the elite class were selected from the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Pakistan. Furthermore, a sample of Pakistani ESL learners from the middle class was recruited from Government College University (GCU) Lahore, Pakistan, and 30 participants of Pakistani ESL learners in the lower class were recruited from the Punjab University (PU), Pakistan. The participants of the current study were selected through nonrandom purposive convenience sampling procedures. There were both male and female respondents included in the current study. The only criteria for selecting the Pakistani ESL learners from different institutions was that the respondents should be educated (at least up to the bachelor's level and have studied English as a compulsory subject) and were postgraduate students studying in their nal years of the course of study.
The Pakistani ESL learners and British English speakers, who took part in the study came from diverse majors, including the Master in Management Sciences, Master in Language and Linguistics, and Master in Computer Sciences. Moreover, the participants of the current study were recruited on the basis of socioeconomic status variables. They were divided into three social classes; elite, middle class, and lower class. The elite class participants were recruited from Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), middle level respondents were recruited from Government College University Lahore, and lower level participants were recruited from Punjab University Lahore. The sample of the present study was relatively heterogeneous because they were in contrast to each other in terms of their cultural, academic experiences, and linguistic behavior (British English speakers and Pakistani ESL learners).

Research Tools
The current study employed a discourse completion test (DCT) as a research tool (See Appendix A). The DCT contained 06 real-life scenarios which were designed on the basis of social distance contextual variables. This questionnaire was comprised 6 real-life situations along with their description that demonstrates a particular social context in which the speaker has to imagine himself/herself and had to ll in the responses as they were in real-life settings. After each situation in DCT, a blank space was given in which the participants had to write their responses because it is a type of written questionnaire.

Reliability of the Instrument
The DCT situations were con rmed by three professors from Leeds University, UK, ve professors from Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), 5 PESL/E, and 5 PESL/M, and 5 PESL/L class speakers (the inter-rater reliability =. 89) as valid and very close to authentic settings. Regarding the time required to ll the DCT, I found that the participants could complete the questionnaire in no more than 15 minutes.

Data Collection Procedure
For data collection from British English speakers, a colleague who was studying in the UK, was asked to administer the data collection instrument. Through telephonic conversation and e-mail, he was instructed by the researchers how to administer the research tools and what was the purpose behind the collection of such type of data. Furthermore, the research tools were e-mailed to the faculty members of University of Leeds, and the University of Manchester, UK, and their email addresses were researched from the university website. On the other hand, within the Pakistani context, the researchers themselves accessed the participants at the proposed institutions to collect data from Elite, Middle, and Lower class respondents. For requesting the participants to take part in the study, a formal consent was sought from all the participants. The participants who consented to participate in the study were asked to complete a DCT and further, they were asked to consider all instructions mentioned for the completion of a DCT to give their responses as they would respond in a real-life societal context and try to give responses as natural as possible.

Data Analysis Procedure
The data obtained through DCT was scrutinized statistically through the help of SPSS software descriptive statistics were run. In the data analysis procedure, at rst-hand data obtained from DCT in respect of congratulation expression was coded in the light of a taxonomy of congratulation schemes put forward by Elwood (2004) and modi ed according to the needs of the study. A training session with the rater and researchers of the current study was conducted prior to starting the coding to familiarise them with the coding scheme and allow them to practise coding some data to ensure their understanding of the task. A discussion session was held after they had coded the data to analyse ndings. The reliability of the interrater was high; most of the interrater inconsistencies were resolved through analysis and discussion of the coding manual de nitions.

Finding And Discussion
In this section, the frequency of using the verbal types of responses, which are called congratulations strategies, are presented in the order of the proposed research questions. The rst research question of this study was asked: 1. What are the basic categories of congratulation strategies employed by Pakistani ESL learners and British English speakers? Table 3 shows the frequency and percentages of the 10 types of verbal responses found in the congratulations of the four groups. It is obvious that the "IFID" (congratulations) was the most frequent strategy used by PESL/M and PESL/L groups (28% and 29%) followed by the strategy of "overlapped strategies" (22% and 22%). In contrast, BritE speakers and PESL/E groups employed "the offer of good wish" strategies more often (25% and 25%), and PESL/M and PESL/L class speakers used these strategies with a percentage of (9% each). Likewise, PESL/M and PESL/L speakers, BritE also used "Overlapped" congratulations strategies quite frequently (19%). In contrast, PESL/E speakers used less "Overlapped" congratulations strategies (11%). Moreover, table 3 indicates that BritE speakers used more strategies of "Expression of Happiness" (11%) than PESL/E, PESL/M and PESL/L participants (9% each). As regards other congratulation strategies, as can be seen in table 3, "Expression of Surprise", "Expression of Validation'', ''the Suggestion of Celebration'', "Expression of Envy", "Utterance of Encouragement", all groups were found using these strategies quite rarely with pretty low percentage.
Although the rst (IFID) type was the most frequent strategy used by the four groups, the difference between them was statistically signi cant. In contrast, the last two strategies showed no signi cant statistical difference. It was expected to nd "congratulations" used more frequently than the other strategies because the events were happy occasions or news. Also, it is usually the rst expression to utter when hearing something good to express happiness and share the occasion with others. This result is supported by almost all the studies on congratulation in different languages and cultures that found "congratulations" is the most frequent expression. However, this differs from Makri-Tsilipakou's results (2001) in Greek and Hernández's (2008) in Peninsular Spanish. Makri-Tsilipakou explained that the use of the expression "congratulations" refers to formality or distance in the relationship between the speaker and addressee. Therefore, the use of "well wishes" is more than "congratulations" in Greek. Hernández (2008) found that "congratulations," which was used only by women, was less common than expressing approval, happiness, and making celebration plans.
In the current study, "congratulations" was used most frequently in the event of "a candidate is newly selected as chief minister" (62 times) and the event of "being a chief guest, speaker congratulates the position holders" (58 times). Although there is more than one form for mubarkan "congratulations" in Urdu, mubarkan is the most frequently used one. The other form for mubarkan is Mubarak, and it was not used frequently because it is from Standard Urdu. Therefore, the simplest form was found frequently. Mubarkan was intensi ed in more than one way, often by using various numbers, such as a thousand, million, billion, and so forth, to intensify its meaning. In addition, it was intensi ed by repetition, such as by repeating its vowel (a), the expression "mubarkaan" itself, the number itself, or by adding other bigger numbers in the form. These various ways of intensifying "mubarakank" can be a result of the absence of prosodic strategies. Additionally, they emphasize Leech's (2007) point of view that intrinsically courteous speech acts, such as congratulations, need intensi cation or gradable expressions. Face enhancing acts such as congratulation also need to be hardened and maximized (Kerbrat-Orecchioni, 1997). Although congratulation strategies lack the physical dimension, the social dimension exists by interacting with friends on activities (Derks et al., 2008). Therefore, offering congratulations on emphasizes the fact that the goal of congratulation is not only to express a psychological state but also it has a social goal that is aimed at strengthening social relationship and intimacy (Makri-Tsilipakou, 2001) among individuals or just to satisfy the social expectation (Bach & Harnish, 1979). Results indicated that PESL groups congratulation strategies were in uenced by their L1 culture-speci c and language-speci c semantic formulaic expressions. They were found using the English equivalent of congratulations (Mubakaan) in Urdu language, except PESL/E group participants who showed a progress towards developing pragmatic competence of the target language.
However, in this current study, the results showed that although "congratulations" was the most frequently used, it was not usually used alone. It was used as a single strategy only (160 times) and mostly in the event of "a candidate is newly selected as chief minister" and the event of "being a chief guest, speaker congratulates the position holders". The comparison of "Overlapped" strategies among the events was conducted based on the top four compound strategies in each event. Therefore, "congratulations" is mostly used with "offer of good wishes", which was statistically signi cant. This result refers to the importance of taking into consideration the patterns of polite compound strategies, and focus not only on the polite expressions alone based on their frequency. The compound strategy of "congratulations" with "offer of good wishes" was used mostly in the event of " a secretory introduces the newly elected sports secretory to the participants", and "a Chief Guest at the Annual Prize Distribution ceremony". This compound strategy was followed by the use of "congratulations" with "offer of good wishes" and "Overlapped" congratulations strategies. This pattern of compound strategy was also used primarily in the event of "a family doctor got married who met ve months ago", "a friend got a job", and "a friend got appointed as a surgeon in a government hospital".
"Offer of good wishes," as the second most frequently used strategy used by the BritE and PESL/E groups was among the other types of responses, is supported by research by Allami (2014) found that "offer of good wishes" is the third most frequently used strategy, while other studies, such as García (2010) in Spanish, found it to be a common strategy in general. However, the different results that indicate a preference and frequency are usually affected by many factors, such as the background of participants, relationship, situation, the tool for collecting data, and so forth.
Most of the expressions used in the current study in "offer of good wishes" are religious expressions, which are prayers/blessings rather than nonreligious wishing expressions. "Offer of good wishes" was also used primarily in the event of "a secretory introduces the newly elected sports secretory to the participants", and "a Chief Guest at the Annual Prize Distribution ceremony". However, the way of congratulating others in the event of "the birth of a baby," for example, can vary or differ based on the medium of communication. For instance, Willer (2001) found that different words are used to describe emotions and physical characteristics of the newborn boy or girl in congratulation greeting cards. Unlike BritE speakers, PESL speakers were found using socio-religious expressions in their congratulation strategies indicating the operation of pragmatic transfer in their congratulation strategies, and an inclination towards adhering to their L1 cultural norms. This way of congratulating is affected by the different genre in the way of expressing congratulation. It was also observed that PESL users tend to employ more than one prayer/blessing or wishing expression in a comment. The use of prayers/blessings as well-wishing is a result of Islamic principles in Pakistani society. Blessings are used by people who believe in the power of words (Wierzbicka, 1987); however, this power is believed to come from Allah, not from the words by themselves. The use of prayers in the situations of congratulation also were found by Emery (2000) and Bataineh (2013) in Arabic, and by Ghaemi and Ebrahimi (2014) in Persian because they are in uenced by the same religion, Islam. This in uence was also observed in the other studies of speech acts by Saudis, such as greetings and leave takings (Hassanain, 1994;Turjoman 2005), compliment (AlAmro, 2013), thanking (Altalhi, 2014), refusal (Al-Shalawi, 1997), and invitation (Alfalig, 2016). However, the use of religious expression is also used in "Overlapped congratulations" in the current study. Although various expressions were used in overlapped congratulations, the religious expression such as mashaallah/Jazakaallah "as Allah wills/ as Allah wills, Allah blesses" was used more frequently than the other praising expressions. It was also used more frequently in the event of "a family doctor got married who met ve months ago", "a friend got a job". It is usually used by Muslims to express praise or happiness when someone hears good news or sees something he/she likes. It is believed that Allah protects the good news/object of jealousy and the evil eye (AlAmro, 2013).
In the current study, some strategies were used infrequently, and most of those were supported by Elwood (2004) and Allami and Nekouzadeh (2011) who found the strategies used with a low frequency. For instance, "expression of validation" was used only on a few occasions by the four groups, mostly in the event of "getting a new position" and "winning an election." "A suggestion to celebrate" was used in the current study only on a very limited occasions by the four groups and mostly in the event of "getting a permanent job" In contrast, Al-Hour (2019) found that it is common in Palestinian society. However, it was interesting to nd that some of the respondents employed some emojis (though it was not included in the scope of the study), such as party popper, confetti ball, red balloon, and so forth to celebrate the occasion.
The strategy of "expression of envy" was used only at certain occasions by the four groups, especially in one of the events, that of "getting a new position" (i.e., The position of "university professor"), However, the use of this strategy was not expected because people usually express their feelings positively and use courtesy in happy events and avoid negative comments. Therefore, it was not used frequently in the data because of the nature of responsibilities in the position of "professor" in university.
"Expressing of surprise" was used at some occasions such as in the event of "family doctor got married" and "getting a new position" to express surprise, and/or that the occasion was not expected. It was used on a few occasions by both male and a female respondents from the four groups. However, Unceta Gómez (2016) found that expressing surprise as a strategy of congratulation was not used by women in Latin.
"Requesting information" was used by both BritE and PESL/E speakers more often than the PESL/M and PESL/L class groups and mostly in the event of "family doctor got married" However, this result was not supported by a number of studies in which it was found that it is one of the most frequently used   4 shows that BritE (7%), PESL/E (5%), PESL/M (6.1%) and PESL/L (5%) groups used more strategies of EOH for close social distance interlocutors as compared to other two variables (neutral and distant).
Another difference among the four groups can be observed in the use of the Utterance of Encouragement strategies. Both BritE (6.1%) and PESL/E groups used more strategies for close level interlocutors. In contrast, both PESL/M (6.1) and PESL/L (5%) groups were found using UoE strategies more often for distant level interlocutors. Regarding Overlapped Congratulations strategies, the four groups used this strategy with a percentage of (BritE 7.7%), (PESL/E 7%), (PESL/M 14%) and (PESL/L 13%) when interacting with close level interlocutors. Nevertheless, the four groups did not favour the use of EoS, EoV, and SoC congratulation strategies more often, as can be noticed in table 4 and Fig. 2.
Noticeably, social distance is found to have great effect on congratulations strategies behaviors in all four groups. In general, as scholars argue (Avazpour, 2020; Lect & Abdulkhaleq, 2020; Wardat & Alkhateeb, 2020), the greater the social distance between the speaker and the hearer, the more frequently IFID expressions (direct and/or indirect) are employed. More speci cally, people almost always utter IFID (directly and/or indirectly) when they are using congratulation strategies for strangers as in the following situation "a passenger is sitting beside you became very excited and happy for being appointed as a surgeon in a government hospital", and very often, they use "Congratulation/Heartiest congratulations" (BritE) "Bundle of Congratulations" (PESL/E), "Congrats" (PESL/M), and "Congratulations" (PESL/L) in their expressions. With friends, as Avazpour (2020) states that IFID (directly and/or indirectly) is also very frequent but less than with strangers; "Request for Information, and The Offer of Good Wish" expressions are used in some scenarios as in "a friend gets a permanent government job" but these appear to be situation-speci c. With intimates, "Expression of Happiness" terms are found in all "intimate interlocutor" situations investigated, and the number of responses with these Expression of Surprise strategies is nearly equal to that of the responses with the Suggestion of Celebration strategies in the events like "a family doctor gets married". The ndings are acknowledged by Wardat and Alkhateeb (2020) who argue that when there is interaction with the distant level interlocutors in congratulation scenarios, more politeness is displayed and there are more chances of using IFID, and the Offer of Good Wish strategies than any other strategies. The ndings are also consistent with Lect

Conclusion
Considering the results, it can be said that the speech act of congratulation is one of the important and frequently used speech acts in everyday communication as suggested by the contexts where the speech act is realized and the strategies. Especially in the case of Pakistani ESL learners, it is found that congratulations are not only frequently used to acknowledge one's success, but they are also exchanged among interlocutors on special days and emotionally loaded occasions such as religious and national days/festivals, birthdays, anniversary and wedding days. Furthermore, this study has revealed that the native speaker conceptualization of the English and Pakistani ESL (except elite class speakers) learners' speech act of congratulation is different considering the contexts of use and the strategies/components. Based on the ndings, it is possible to state that English congratulation is more task-oriented, whereas Pakistani congratulation is more social relational (Can, 2011). Speci cally, in terms of achievement, English and PESL/E seem to follow an individually oriented achievement motive, while Pakistani (ESL/M and ESL/L) appear to have a socially oriented achievement motive (Ezzaoua, 2020) as the use of particular strategies in the contexts of achievement has indicated. In this respect, in Hofstede's terms (2011), the collectivist and feminine aspect of Pakistani culture and the individualistic masculine aspect of British culture seem to be reselected in the realization of the speech act of congratulation as far as the data and the ndings of this study are concerned.
This study can be considered to have some contributions in the areas of cross-cultural and intercultural communication by focusing on the sociopragmatic aspects of the speech act of congratulation in British English and Pakistani and presenting the cultural knowledge and awareness through congratulation contexts and strategies which will help interlocutors to cope with real life situations. In this way, intercultural communicative competence (Byram, 2012) can be ensured enabling non-native speakers to "survive" in new contexts and interpersonal relations by successfully responding to unfamiliar linguistic, cultural and social factors (Olshtain & Celce-Murcia, 2016).
The current study also has some implications in foreign language education, speci cally in the area of pragmatic competence and the development of speech acts by providing metapragmatic information about the speech act of congratulation, which lacks evidence in the literature and in teaching materials (Taguchi, 2019). Such information or input based on linguistic evidence could be useful for learners of English as a second/foreign language, who can have the chance to develop cultural awareness and communicative competence. Not only non-native speakers but also native speakers will gain awareness with regard to what is appropriate in the realization of the speech act of congratulation in their own speech communities since for non-native speakers such knowledge is often unavailable at a conscious level (Wardat & Alkhateeb, 2020). In addition, material developers or program coordinators can use the input in developing materials for learners of English as a foreign/second language and thus, incorporate it into textbooks or other supplementary classroom materials. The incorporation of cultural and pragmatic information regarding the speech act of congratulation is expected to increase the number of "small C" elements present in textbooks in comparison with the fact-oriented "big C" elements which have been dominating the textbooks and which have been criticized for their inadequacy in developing cultural competence (Taguchi & Roever, 2017). Other than foreign language learners and material developers, teachers can also bene t from the results of this study, especially in terms of explicit metapragmatic instruction and teachers' pedagogical development as well as pragmatic competence.

Funding
There was no funding available for this research.

Competing interests
There are no competing interests relevant to this research.

Authors' contributions
Dr Nazir Malik provided critical insights and valuable comments for the improvement of the manuscript.
Dr Tahir Saleem conceived the study, and executed it by following some rigorous procedures.
Mr Asif Aziz collected and anlysed the data, including the composing the manuscript.
university. What you will say to him? You: Situation 4: You went to visit a pace with your father. There your father sees his family doctor, whom he hasn't seen for a long period of time. Your father inquired from him about his absence. He informed me that he got married ve months ago. What you will say to him? You: Situation 5: You are a regional sports director and you are visiting a sports complex with your secretary.
There he introduces you to a newly selected member of your regional sports team. What you will say to him on his selection? You: Situation 6: You are working as a dean at a university. You are called as a Chief Guest at the Annual Prize Distribution ceremony at another campus of the university in order to distribute awards among the top of the university. How you will respond to him/her on his/her great achievement?
You: Congratulation Strategies Distribution interacting with Social Distance