Speech as a genre of political discourse

At present have a considerable amount of works devoted to the notions of genre and discourse at their disposal, however the variety of genres of political discourse has not yet been fully described. That is why the key goal of this article is singling out and describing president's victory speech as a genre of political discourse. The method of functional description developed by E. I. Sheygal has been used as a basis for this work because it is possible to speak about partial functional similarity of these two genres. In the article one is presented with the analysis of the genre of victory speech from the point of view of integrative, inspirative and performative functions carried out also by inaugural speeches. In addition, two new functions are singled out - interdiscursive and expressive. The former consists in implicit and explicit referring to predecessors' discourses and in appealing to common knowledge shared by the author and the audience. The latter gives decisive influence on stylistic characteristic of words, i.e. on the choice of expressive lexis. The overview on the functions of victory speeches is supported by examples taken from two Barack Obama's victory speeches (of 2008 and 2012 respectively). The choice of illustrative material is explained by high concentration of stylistic devices and the author's remarkable skill of compiling speeches for public performances. The results of the present work are in correlation with its goals: the functional difference between victory speeches and inaugural ones are considered relevant enough for discussing the former as a separate genre.