Well-wishing practices in Greek and English food blogs

Abstract Wishes are remarks that express the desire that things will turn out well for one’s interlocutor. They are among the expressive speech acts that have received scant scholarly attention. Purporting to further their study in online communication and extend the line of their comparative analysis, the present study examines wishes in the digital environment of Greek and English food blogs. Employing the relational work framework, our study examines 1,061 wishes occurring in the comment section of three Greek and three English food blogs. Our aim is to identify the triggering events, the types (situational, interactional or mixed) and forms (conventionalised or creative) of wishes found in the data, and the functions they perform in terms of relational work (politic or polite). Our analysis shows that the majority of wishes in Greek and English food blogs are situational. Interactional wishes are also present in the data; however, the majority of the English ones relates to the topic of the blog, i.e., the making or the consumption of a dish, whereas most Greek interactional wishes concern the addressee’s well-being. Finally, mixed wishes appear much more frequently in the Greek than in the English dataset. Our findings suggest that wishes are instances of polite relational work for Greek commenters, whereas of politic behaviour for the English.