Rhetoric of the modern Speech from the Throne

Abstract

The article attempts at a comprehensive analysis of expressive means and rhetorical strategies in the Speeches from the Throne by British monarchs of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, viewed as key mechanisms of their linguistic (persuasive) and extralinguistic (political) potential development. The relevance of the study is stipulated by the growing scholarly interest in ritualized forms of political rhetoric and the need for an integrated reconsideration of the Speech from the Throne as a specific genre of institutional communication that combines the features of ceremony, political agenda presentation, and persuasiveness. In this study, the Speech from the Throne is approached not only as a protocol text but as a strategically organized discourse aimed at legitimizing the government’s agenda and constructing the symbolic unity of the state. The aim of the article is to analyse Speeches from the Throne by British monarchs of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as a genre of ritualized political discourse and to identify the principal stylistic and rhetorical devices that ensure implementation of governmental agendas. Thus, methods of linguostylistic and rhetorical analyses are applied to stylistically marked units at various levels (lexical, morphological, and syntactic). The findings demonstrate that the Speech from the Throne operates at the intersection of the official and publicist styles, combining formulaic standardization with expressive persuasive techniques. The most productive stylistic figures include anaphora, antithesis, gradation, and tripartite constructions, which structure the text, foreground key agenda provisions, and enhance its rhythmic and intonational organization. Repetition explicates institutional authority, antithesis sharpens axiological oppositions, while gradation and tripartite patterns establish logical completeness and semantic hierarchy. It is concluded that the system of expressive means in the contemporary Speech from the Throne is integrative in its nature and is designed to ensure coherence, symbolic legitimacy, and pragmatic impact of the former on the British Parliament and society.