A RHETORICAL APPROACH TO ZONES OF MEANING AND ORGANIZATIONAL PREROGATIVES

Meaning is essential to the study and practice of public relations. For that reason, a rhetorical perspective on public relations gives the opportunity to address the impact of words and other symbols, and therefore constitutes a worthy candidate to be the dominant paradigm for the study and practice of public relations. This paradigm presses us to realize that public relations entails not just communication, but communication about something. Robert L. Heath is a professor in the School of Communication at the University of Houston.