Вопросно-ответный ход в российском политическом дискурсе

The article presents one of the types of rhetorical mechanisms used in political discourse – the question and answer method. The question and answer method is a rhetorical device in which the speaker asks a question and formulates his answer to it. The material for research is based on the official public texts of utterances made by contemporary Russian politicians: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev, Vladimir Volfovich Zhirinovsky and Gennady Andreyevich Zyuganov. Definitions of the question-answering method are provided and the main functions of this phenomenon are given. The analysis shows that the question-answering method helps politicians to persuade society. It can be concluded that this rhetorical device serves to establish contact with the audience, to draw attention to information, to make the speeches of politicians dynamic, expressive and emotional. The most important thing, however, is that the question-answering method leads to the type of solution proposed by the politician that is desirable for the consideration of problems. The linguistic material has shown that this is an actively used method in the political discourse of contemporary Russia.