Abstract

This study looks into the hybridity of a particular political discourse format by exploring different sets of characteristics of the press release genre published by the Office of the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1996 and 2005. In an integrated approach preceded by a substantial contextualization of the problem, the genre is analyzed in terms of its activity, social relations and communication technology. Particular political communication strategies the genre is meant to accomplish, such as legitimization, coercion and representation, are also anlayzed in terms of their linguistic realizations such as lexical and semantic content, metaphors, metapragmatic features, perlocution and construction of social hierarchy/distance towards recipients.