Correlation of the Concepts of Public Communication and PR-Discourse in the Mass Media Space

Objectives: This article deals with many-fold inter-correlations of the concepts of public communication and PR-discourse within the mass media space. Methods: Common and specific characteristics of public communication are identified. It is one of the vectors of social communication, whose basic feature is the unity of interactivity and accessibility to members of society. From the perspective of semiotics, media discourse structures the semantic communicative field and generates mental activity of a society by reference to goals and objectives of social communication. Findings: PR-discourse is closely related to reality and is defined not only as verbal and cogitative activity but also as cognitive and communicative activity forming its discursive area. PR-discourse characteristics are due to its pronounced pragma-linguistic and evaluation focus, abundance with expressive and emotional components relating both to language/speech means and associated behavioral manifestations. The research has determined PR-discourse functions (cognitive, analytical, informational and communicative, manipulative, creative, transformational ones), establishing communication strategies, projecting specific images, ideas and values and having a certain social context. PR-discourse is a socially significant phenomenon affecting eventually on the cultural and historical development of a society. Improvements: PR-discourse regulates communicative situations arising in the area of PR-communication and in the ways of implementation of PR-discourse in the media by certain types of PR-texts. Sociolinguistic characteristics of the communicative process in PR-discourse are closely related to the interaction of all participants and aimed at solving specific problems of communication.