Dialogic and Postmodern Studies of Public Relations

• In Event: Typology Teasing: Extending on Sociological Approaches in Public Relations

Abstract

Using Deetz’s (1996) typology of metatheoretical approaches to organization science, the work of Jean-Francoise Lyotard (1971, 1984, 1988; Lyotard & Thébaud, 1985) addresses the dissensus/emergent quadrant. This paper will focus on how Lyotard’s work provides a lens to understand the inability of public relations practitioners to gain consensus between institutions and stakeholders and their inability to shape meaning through their messages.

The paper will explore the linguistic roots of dialogic studies and how Lyotard apply them in his conceptualization of “language games” (Lyotard & Thébaud, 1985, p. 50), which led him to reject consensus in favor of dissensus. Using Lyotard’s explication of denotative (descriptive) and prescriptive language the paper will argue that all theorizing in public relations is prescriptive and therefore not objective because it is based in the values and norms of both the researcher and the particular “genre of discourse” the specific scientific approach requires. Lyotard’s (1988) concept of the differend further elaborates how ignoring differences in an effort to gain consensus is motivated by the desire for power that leads to injustice.

Addressing the second component of the dissensus/emergent component of the Deetz typology the paper will follow on Lyotard’s critique of consensus and the Platonic understanding of dialectics to elaborate on the instability of meaning. Lyotard’s insistence on replacing metanarratives with little narratives directly relates to the emergent component of the Deetz typology. Little narratives privilege local and situational knowledge, which requires practitioners to emerge themselves in stakeholder environments to truly understand stakeholder concerns and arguments. Thus his vision of sense-making and meaning creation as unstable and forever changing the sender, the addressee and the referent implies that public relations practitioners have limited powers when it comes to creating and shaping an institution’s message.

Finally, the paper will argue with Lyotard (1984, p. 15) that “[t]he social bond is linguistic” and that nobody, not even the least of us, is powerless over the messages that traverse one’s space. Lyotard’s linguistic approach thus provides a theoretical foundation for using language as an activist strategy in public relations.

Author

• Derina R. Holtzhausen, Oklahoma State U