语政治演说文体的一个基本特征是通俗易懂，不管是学者、教授，还是平民、文盲一听就懂。政治演说大都逻辑严密，语言精炼，简明扼要，短促有力，有鼓动性，有感召力。有的演说使用排比、对仗等手段，使语言有音乐的节奏，有艺术的魅力。在诸多政治演说中，美国已故总统亚伯拉罕·林肯1863年在葛底斯堡的演说可以算得上是精品中的精品。一百多年来，在美国，甚至在全世界广为流传，真可为传世佳作。我国有些学者早就把这篇演说译成中文，可是笔者发现就正式出版的书刊里林肯演说的中译本大都不能体现原文的语言和文体风格。这里笔者把原文和两个中译本抄录于下。

               Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address
                     (on Nov.19,1863)
    Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

    Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
We are met on a great battle field of the war. We have come to dedicate a portion of the field as the final resting-place of those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.

    It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.来源：考试大

    But , in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our power to add or to detract.
The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. 来源：考试大

    It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here, to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us: that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation shall. under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
  
                      美国总统林肯葛底斯堡演讲词

    八十七年前，我们的先辈们在这个大陆上创立了一个新国家，它孕育于自由之中，奉行一切人生来平等的原则。来源：考试大

    现在我们正从事一场伟大的内战，以考验这个国家，或者说以考验任何一个孕育于自由而奉行上述原则的国家是否能够长久存在下去。我们在这场战争中的一个伟大战场上集会。烈士们为使这个国家能够生存下去而献出了自己的生命，我们在此集会是为了把这个战场的一部分奉献给他们作为最后安息之所。我们这样做是完全应该而且非常恰当的。来源：考试大

    但是，从更广泛的意义上来说，这块土地我们不能够奉献，我们不能够圣化，我们不能够神化。曾经在这里战斗过的勇士们，活着的和去世的，已经把这块土地神圣化了，这远不是我们微薄的力量所能增减的。全世界将很少注意到，也不会长期地记起我们今天在这里所说的话，但全世界永远不会忘记勇士们在这里做过的事。勿宁说，倒是我们这些还活着的人，应该在这里把自己奉献于勇士们已经如此崇高地向前推进但尚未完成的事业。倒是我们应该在这里把自己奉献于仍然留在我们面前的伟大任务，以便使我们从这些光荣的死者身上汲取更多的奉献精神，来完成他们已经完全彻底为之献身的事业；以便使我们在这里下定最大的决心，不让这些死者们白白牺牲；以便使国家在上帝幅佑下得到自由的新生，并且使这个民有、民治、民享的政府永世长存。