The good organization communicating well

Public Relations Review 37 (2011) 441–449

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Public Relations Review

The good organization communicating well: Teaching rhetoric in the

public relations classroom

Ashli Quesinberry Stokes a,∗, Damion Waymer b

a UNC Charlotte, 5004 Colvard, 9201 University City Boulevard, Charlotte, NC 28223, United States b Virginia Tech, United States

a r t i c l e i n f o

Keywords:

Rhetoric

Public relations

Pedagogy

Ethics

Application

a b s t r a c t

This essay refines public relations pedagogy by demonstrating further the ways in which

rhetorical instruction can be a good means of teaching public relations students critical

thinking skills needed to be thoughtful, ethical, and reflective practitioners. We argue that

exposing students to classes and techniques rooted in the rhetorical tradition can (1) help

to prepare students for practice; (2) address criticism of the curriculum’s limited func￾tionalistic scope; (3) prepare students to both understand and interrogate public discourse

generally. We establish the foundations of rhetoric’s role in public relations and provide

three pedagogical examples and classroom exercises, thus demonstrating the benefits of

further incorporating this perspective into the public relations classroom. The pragmatic

implications of those exercises and other efforts in infusing the rhetorical tradition into

public relations pedagogy are discussed.

© 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

What is public relations? What philosophical suppositions guide its theoretical development and advancement? Is it an

academic discipline with theoretical traditions and underpinnings or simply an applied practice (or some combination of

both)? Questions like these have and continue to surround public relations. Moreover, the last question is most important to

this special issue because at the heart of it lies the answer as to how we approach teaching public relations in our classrooms.

What constitutes public relations education has been debated by scholars for more than two decades. During the 1980s,

two prevailing themes emerged: where should public relations be housed—in journalism, communication, or management

departments (Grunig, 1989) and what should be taught in the curriculum (Grunig, 1989; Heath, 1991; VanLeuven, 1989). In

the 1990s the pedagogy discussion continued, where a study found teacher training and preparation was minimal; the field

had not given enough attention to pedagogy, research on pedagogical techniques was scant, and pedagogical tools were

weak (Coombs & Rybacki, 1999). Nearly a decade later, researchers argued that little scholarly progress had been made in

public relations pedagogy (Todd & Hudson, 2009). There remains a need by scholars to continue to refine and define public

relations pedagogy—hence the development of this special issue.

We recognize that a primary goal of public relations education (as espoused by educators and executives alike) is to

prepare students adequately for the practice (DiStaso, Stacks, & Botan, 2009; Stacks, Botan, & VanSlyke Turk, 1999). Our

aim, however, is to continue to refine pedagogy by demonstrating further the ways in which rhetorical instruction can be

a good means in teaching students critical thinking skills needed to be thoughtful, ethical, and reflective practitioners. We

argue that exposing students to the rhetorical tradition instills these important traits and (1) helps prepare students for

practice; (2) addresses criticism of the curriculum’s insular and limited functionalistic scope (McKie & Munshi, 2007); and

(3) prepares students to both understand and interrogate public discourse generally.

∗ Corresponding author.

E-mail address: [email protected] (A.Q. Stokes).

0363-8111/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.pubrev.2011.09.018