Presidential inaugural addresses

This study of political discourse describes the genre of presidential inaugural addresses from a perspective of the social action performed. The paper focuses on linguistic features that surface in the text due to its functioning in a ritual of power transition that converts an individual into a public figure and an audience into a nation. Placing the genre in domain of epideictic rhetoric, the analysis goes on to reveal the specifics of speaker-listener relations, primarily orality of the text and the rhetorical advantages and limitations that shape it. The study also reports on the pronominal distribution that aligns with various public roles and responsibilities which the speaker prepares to take on.