Instrumentalisation of critical discourse studies: a linguistic analysis of public relations concepts in the CDS journal article abstracts (2000–2020)

The paper investigates how public relations (PR) concepts contribute to and shape Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) research. While CDS has frequently critiqued PR practices (e.g., media image, crisis communication, strategic management, corporate social responsibility), little work has examined the reverse influence—how PR theories and concepts benefit CDS. Using van Leeuwen’s integrationist model of interdisciplinarity, the study focuses on three PR concepts—"image", "stakeholder", and "strategy"—to explore their linguistic and discursive deployment in CDS journal article abstracts (2000–2020). The purpose is to demonstrate that employing these PR concepts instrumentalises CDS by offering analytic communication tools that help interpret management power use, identities, ideologies, and discursive patterns, thereby advancing CDS’s interdisciplinary development.

The paper situates CDS as an inherently interdisciplinary field concerned with discourse, power, ideology, and identity, tracing its development from CDA to CDS and its engagement with multiple disciplines (e.g., psychology, ethnography, anthropology). It reviews van Leeuwen’s three models of interdisciplinarity (centralist, pluralist, integrationist), endorsing the integrationist approach where equal, interdependent disciplines contribute specific skills to problem-oriented research. It then synthesises PR definitions (Harlow; CIPR) emphasising reputation/image, stakeholder relations, and strategic communication, and notes PR’s sub-domains (issues management, corporate communications, stakeholder relations, risk communication, CSR). Prior CDS research has engaged PR topics (media image, crisis communication, strategic management, CSR) mainly to critique PR practices and their ideological effects. The review identifies a gap: limited research on how PR concepts contribute to CDS. It justifies focusing on three PR concepts—"image" (institutional reputation and its discursive representation), "stakeholder" (influencing or influenced social actors/publics), and "strategy" (methods/tactics; with a bridging concept of "discursive strategy"). Other PR notions (persuasion, legitimisation, branding, propaganda, publicity, sponsorship, censorship, relationship) are excluded for not capturing the overall PR scope like "strategy" or being outside the study’s focus.

Design: An ontological, interdisciplinary study adopting van Leeuwen’s integrationist model to examine the linguistic and discursive use of PR concepts in CDS. Data source: Abstracts of CDS-themed journal articles (English) from 2000–2020. Database and indexing: Web of Science (SSCI and A&HCI). Search terms: "critical discourse analysis" OR "critical discourse studies". Initial hits: 2,878 articles. Screening: Titles, abstracts, keywords checked to ensure a clear CDS focus (mentions of "critical" and "discourse" and/or critical dimensions of power, ideology, identity). Accessibility and theoretical orientation considered; questionable cases inspected via full text. Exclusions: 377 removed; final dataset: 2,501 abstracts. Tools and procedures: AntConc 3.5.9 used for frequency and co-occurrence analyses. Target concepts: "image" (and "images"), "stakeholder" (and "stakeholders"), "strategy" (and "strategies"). Initial counts in abstracts: image 227; stakeholder 84; strategy 701. Context window: 150 characters left/right to review sentences. Inclusion/exclusion criteria: (1) Exclude literal/non-PR senses; (2) Include uses tied to PR either in typical PR cases or broader PR sense; (3) Select examples where the concept operates at the same analytical level in the abstract. For "image": include institutional reputation (media/official representations), exclude purely visual senses. For "stakeholder": include PR sense in both typical and general shared-interest contexts (e.g., education), identifying social actors as stakeholders. For "strategy": include only "discursive strategy" uses (bridging PR and CDS); exclude purely linguistic tools or purely behavioural actions outside a discursive PR context. Final sample for qualitative analysis: image 77, stakeholder 77, strategy 370. Analytic approach: Mixed methods—quantitative description of distributions and qualitative analysis of (1) linguistic tactics/realizations and (2) discursive use demonstrating instrumentalisation of CDS.

Image: Of 227 occurrences, 77 met PR criteria. Distribution by social actor (Table 1): Country/government/city 42 (54.5%); (non)commercial organisations 13 (16.9%); individuals 22 (28.6%). Linguistic realization: abstracts negotiate "image" semantically along positive/negative/neutral orientations (e.g., contrasting portrayals of Chinese government in smog coverage), supporting critiques of van Dijk’s "positive-self/negative-other" discourse. Discursive use: frequent co-occurrence and correlation of "image" with "identity" and/or "brand" (e.g., Switzerland’s image/identity in migration/populism debates), enabling visualization of social actors and facilitating identity interpretation in CDS analyses. Stakeholder: 77 PR-sense examples across domains (Table 2): political governance 14 (18.2%), (higher) education 12 (15.6%), tourism 11 (14.3%), corporate communication 11 (14.3%), healthcare 9 (11.7%), agriculture 8 (10.4%), environment 5 (6.5%), law 3 (3.9%), others (art, sports, family, philanthropy) 4 (5.1%). Linguistic realization: labelling focal "social actors" as stakeholders frames interest groups, sharpens analytic focus, and structures inquiry into ideologies and power (e.g., NHK Paiwan case). Discursive use: notable extension of stakeholder framing into non-neoliberal contexts (e.g., higher education internal branding), foregrounding neoliberal ideologies (students as consumers) and motivating evaluation of policy legitimation. Strategy: 370 discursive-strategy examples; quantitative distribution (Table 3): linguistic tool only 23 (6.2%); non-linguistic social action 85 (23.0%); discursive strategies 262 (70.8%). Linguistic realization: mediated use spans linguistic and non-linguistic performances (e.g., Facebook racism discourse via identification/persuasion macro-strategies realized by nomination, referential, predication, perspectivation), yet shows an imbalance favouring discursive strategies over detailed linguistic or behavioural tactics. Discursive use: research is frequently "strategy-bound", organized around questions that inventory and analyse legitimisation or meaning-making strategies (e.g., authorisation, moralisation, mythopoesis, rationalisation, management) to reveal managerial power/ideological control (e.g., Nigerian employment relations). Overall: Across concepts, PR terms help taxonomise CDS semiotics and provide operative analytical foci—image (representation and identity/brand), stakeholder (actor roles/interest groups), strategy (methods of discursive power/legitimation).

The findings address the research questions by demonstrating that PR concepts function as analytical instruments within CDS. First, taxonomisation: the semantic negotiation of "image" clarifies evaluative stances and supports classic CDS critiques of in-group/out-group representation; stakeholder labelling operationalises the identification of social actors and interest alignments across diverse domains; the predominance of discursive "strategy" structures analyses around how power and ideology are enacted. Second, instrumentalisation: correlating "image" with identity/brand accelerates interpretation of institutional and individual identities; applying "stakeholder" in non-business arenas exposes and critiques neoliberal encroachment and legitimating discourses; framing studies via "strategy-bound" questions foregrounds the skills and methods through which managerial power operates. Collectively, these uses align with the integrationist model by translating PR’s conceptual toolkit into CDS’s problem-oriented analyses, enabling more precise critique of management power use, identity construction, and ideological effects. The study also reflects on risks: potential "self-instrumentalisation" if "image" eclipses broader identity dimensions, if ubiquitous stakeholder framing normalises PR perspectives in non-neoliberal contexts, or if over-emphasis on strategies sidelines other CDS components (e.g., actor relations, production/reception mechanisms).

The study shows that incorporating the PR concepts "image", "stakeholder", and "strategy" into CDS research instrumentalises CDS in productive ways: it provides communication-analytic tools to focus inquiries, interpret managerial power and ideology, and organise discourse analyses. This advances interdisciplinary integration between PR and CDS and evidences two-way development—CDS critiques PR as social practice while PR concepts help systematise CDS semiotics and analyses. However, careful regulation of conceptual use is needed to avoid narrowing CDS’s scope (e.g., conflating identity with image, over-normalising stakeholder frames, or over-prioritising strategies). Future research should broaden the PR conceptual set beyond the three examined terms and extend analysis to full articles (not only abstracts) to capture richer discursive practices and contextual mechanisms of production and reception.

The analysis is limited to three PR concepts ("image", "stakeholder", "strategy"), excluding other relevant PR notions (e.g., persuasion, legitimisation, branding, propaganda, publicity, sponsorship, censorship, relationship). Data are restricted to abstracts rather than full articles, representing only a portion of CDS literature and potentially omitting nuanced analyses present in full texts.