Prognosis and retroprognosis as genres of political communication

The article considers prognosis and retroprognosis as genres of political communication. The functions of prognosis and retroprognosis are described, which include: normative, indicative, warning. The main linguistic means typical for the analyzed genres are considered. Prognosis, like any genre, has its own distinctive set of linguistic means, which include: verbs with predictive value (wait, predict, forecast); words with a modal meaning (maybe, could); mitigative means (most likely, probably). In political communication, the linguistic means used in the genre of retroprognosis are very similar to the means of normative prognosis, however, the construction of the structure is carried out in the opposite way: instead of the prognosis itself, the current state of affairs can be stated first, then a virtual scenario is proposed, constructed different from real events. It is concluded that in political communication, the practically useful result from retroprognosis will be much less significant compared to the prognosis: the latter builds models of a possible future, starting from the conditions of the present, and does not develop alternative options for the development of the future from a certain point in the past, with which directly retroprognosis is connected.