Public relations writing – a genre‐based model

This paper attempts to establish the existence of a professional language genre for public relations by evaluating the history of genre analysis and its application in professional contexts. Bhatia’s work, in 1993, demonstrates professional language genre analysis in similar contexts to public relations writing, which make the mapping of the process both relevant and workable for this discipline. The application of Bhatia’s and Swale’s work, in 1990, on modelling the rhetorical moves behind communicative purposes of a genre has been successfully applied within the paper to the news release genre. The paper therefore proposes a model of professional language genre analysis, which may provide a useful guide to writing effective news releases for practitioners and students working in the fields of public relations and corporate communications.