Logo: to the web site of Uppsala University

Celebrations and festivities give rise to certain rituals strongly connected to significant linguistic phenomena as routine formulas. Nevertheless, only few works on the role of these units in the cultural context of birthday celebrations are done. The aim of this paper is an analysis of ‘wishing formulas’ in German in the context of birthday congratulations. Not only formulas as Gratuliere, Herzlichen Glückwunsch zum Geburtstag but also birthday songs are investigated. Birthday songs with their small text format are seen as formulaic texts. They are closely tied to the concrete situation of the birthday celebration and performed as serenades.The study shows that the songs are constitutive and indispensable for the ritual itself and they help to frame the celebration. They also have a thoroughly important and necessary function of shaping relationships - despite their structural formulaic nature and stereotypical and predictable content. The serenade contributes to the temporal expansion and performative exaggeration of the celebration.

Occasional music was frequently used in the 17th century and indispensable for court ceremonies. From acultural-analytical and linguistic perspective, the contribution considers occasional music for the purpose of homage as amulti-code type of text. For the analysis of the compositions, concepts, metaphors and topics are taken into account; this refers to semantic units beyond the semantics of words and sentences. However, the focus of the article is not only on the semantics of complex linguistic signs, but it is also intended to show by contextualization how meaning was created in ceremonies by functionalizing emotions for socio-political purposes.