Rhetorical Moves in Presidential Victory Speeches: Spotlighting a Non-native Speaker Context

Presidential speeches, particularly victory speeches (VSs), represent a distinctive genre within political discourse, reflecting national identity, persuasive strategies, and leadership ethos. Existing research on presidential speech genres has analysed their rhetorical structures, linguistic features, and ideological functions, mainly in Western or pan-African contexts. However, little attention has been paid to Ghanaian presidents’ VSs as a genre. This study, therefore, investigates the schematic structure of the VSs delivered by four presidents of Ghana’s Fourth Republic. Swales’s (1990) move/step analysis was utilised as the analytical framework, and Huttner’s (2010) model was employed to determine the status of each move. A qualitative research design was adopted to facilitate an in-depth exploration of the generic structure and the communicative functions of the identified moves. The findings demonstrate that Ghanaian presidents’ VSs are characterised by a four move structure: saluting, thanking, appealing to the audience, and closing. We must stress that these moves appear in a linear sequence in the data. Also, the thanking move occupies the most textual space. In contrast, the saluting move occupies the least space, suggesting that a VS primarily serves as an avenue for a president-elect to express appreciation for the electorate’s overwhelming support. The findings contribute to scholarship on political discourse, with particular emphasis on presidential VSs and genre studies.