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In political discourses, however, politicians resort to
alliterations, parellelisms, juxtapositions and other rhetorical and
stylistic devices to substantiate their argument and eventually
achieve their desired political goals. What a politician primarily
aims at is to persuade his audience into believing in the validity and
legitimacy of the political case in question, in the confident hope
that he would ultimately win the audience over to his side. Hartmann
(1980, pll) argues that "Winston Churchill's call to war ('blood, toil,
tears, and sweat') on 13 May 1940, can be characterized in rhetorical
terms as a combination of the plain-style announcement of the formation
of a new government and the moving-style exhortation of the population
to join in the forthcoming battle with the German aggressor".
Nevertheless, the text of Churchill's political address does attract
the stylistician as a work of literary art. Rhetorical and stylistic
features are employed in a political discourse in order to impress the
audience or the reading public. This overlap, or rather the active
interplay, of rhetorical and stylistic devices is quite discernible in
both political and literary discourses, no clear-cut demarcation lines
being traceable or deducible.
A liturgical discourse, however, draws upon a diction of its own.
A religious sermon, for instance, is encompassed in a language
uniquely replete with words, phrases, and constructions which are
extremely connotative and highly pregnant with religious and moral
implications. The preacher or the sermon-giver indefatiguably strives
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