"grateful speech" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
You can use it to refer to a speech that is thankful and expresses appreciation. For example, you could say "The award recipient gave a heart-felt, grateful speech to thank those who supported her."
Christopher Plummer, among the winners, was the most pleasing, and I was tickled by the two editors of "Dragon Tattoo," who refused to make an endlessly grateful speech and just hustled themselves off the stage ("Let's get out of here…. We're editors").
It was still fun to see the Best Actress in a Drama, Elisabeth Moss, win what I chose to regard as an Emmy for the first season of "Top of the Lake," and to see the Best Supporting Actress in a Drama, Ann Dowd, win what I chose to regard as an Emmy for the second season of "The Leftovers" — and she gave a sweet, truly surprised and grateful speech.
I will forego the "can't you just be grateful" speech if you read some of the letters my grandfather wrote home while serving in Europe during WWII.
As the crowd leapt and hugged you half-expected Wenger to start tapping the rim of his champagne flute and making a fond, grateful, dad-ish speech.
We are of course grateful for free speech, but we are tired of people using that freedom to senselessly cut others down.
He is as aware of this irony as anyone, and his acceptance speech was grateful, hortatory, and, finally, pessimistic.
She HAS to WIN! Which means we can all look forward to lower-lip-quivering and a #grateful and #blessed acceptance speech.
Apart from a brief note of encouragement after this speech, Flanders was grateful that President Eisenhower stayed out of the McCarthy controversy.
But several survivors said they felt moved by Obama's speech and were grateful to him for coming, although some still had criticism.
Whatever he would have said — and how he would have said it — almost certainly would have been an intriguing departure from speeches made by grateful players, managers, executives and umpires.
You will, of course, remember the massive national celebrations of Milton's 400th birthday at the end of 2008 – the speeches from a grateful parliament, the prayers of thanks from the Protestant pulpits, and the BBC's epic, CGI-rich adaptation of Paradise Lost, our rich literature's greatest single poem.
