**4.2 Complexity/length of expressions of gratitude**

The analysis of the complexity of the thanks utterances in the corpus reveals that the participants employ simple thanks as well as complex thanks. Simple expressions of gratitude consist of one act/move as in *merci beaucoup* "thank you very much" or *c'est très gentil (de ta part)* "that's very kind of you." As can be seen in **Table 2**, the respondents most frequently use complex gratitude expressions, i.e., those made up of several acts/moves as in (1), (2), and (3). In (1), the second gratitude expression (*C'est gentil de ta part*) is intended to intensify the illocutionary force of the first one (*Merci beaucoup*). Example (2) consists of three moves. The first two acts "*Merci*" *and* "*je ne sais comment vous remercier"* are used to express the speaker's gratitude, while the third move "*Ça vous dirait de prendre un verre ensemble?*" serves to intensify the two preceding gratitude expressions. In (3), the speaker expresses his gratitude using a combination of three moves: a familiarization act (*Monsieur je suis l'étudiant à qui vous avez accordé un autre délai pour la remise du travail*), a presentation of the work (*voici le rapport*), and an expression of gratitude (*je vous remercie pour votre compréhension*). ([24], p. 131) argues that combinations of several moves in the expression of gratitude appear to be more polite than simple thanks.

The analysis also reveals that the distribution of simple and complex gratitude expressions varies across the three situations. Of the 111 simple expressions identified in the data, there are 47 tokens in the professor situation, 47 in the stranger situation, and only 17 in the friend situation. Complex gratitude expressions are more commonly employed in the friend situation. However, it is worth mentioning that complex utterances are generally much longer in the professor situation than in the other two situations: they are employed in order to emphasize the speaker's sincerity in expressing gratitude to a superior.

The next section focuses on the realization patterns and distribution of the direct thanks, indirect thanks, and supportive acts found in the data.
