The aim of this article is to analyze the form and pragmatic features of speech acts communicating the speaker’s surprise in Polish. The collected research material includes approximately 300 statements extracted from 20th- and 21st-century prose works. The study leads to the conclusion that the analyzed speech acts most often take the form of defective questions and grammatically independent interrogative structures. Speech acts in the form of declarative sentences are also encountered. Interjections, in turn, have a small share in the examined material. In addition to informing about surprise and expressing it, the analyzed speech acts may also, among others, perform the directive function, simultaneously express other emotional states and specify the causes of surprise.