Rhetorical Turn
1
Using The Rhetorical Turn to grasp the full importance of public relations
Abstract
This paper sides with critics who say that at present public relations is NOT a bona fide
area of university study. However the paper argues that public relations COULD be made
a legitimate and surprisingly important academic discipline through a deeper
understanding of notions of rhetoric than that given by Robert Heath (Heath. 2001). In
the post modern era, scientism, progressivism, grand-narration, in fact all the other
pointers to thinking and philosophy, are coming adrift from their foundations for most
western people. One consequence of this fragmentation of perspectives, this loss of
religiosity or faith in progress and the modern, is that the academic ‘market’- as we might
call it, has a new opening for a subject which specialises in understanding frameworks for
thinking in the post modern age. Public relations activity fills this role in a similar way to
the way rhetoric filled this role for the ancients.
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