ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of speech act theory, the related scholarship within the public relations field and its role in positioning theory. An account of how positioning has been enacted in practice is then provided, followed by a description of how speech act theory can provide guidance for positioning enactment strategies. In a public relations sense, a practitioner's work needs the audience to take up their offering and together co-construct the meaning and define the speech act. Work to connect speech act theory and positioning theory in public relations has only appeared in recent years; and moved towards examining speech act theory in the context of purposive communication. To demonstrate how positioning is enacted in public relations campaigns the Framework for Intentional Positioning in Public Relations was applied to past reports of award-winning government agency/public sector organizations' campaigns in Australia. It investigates whether government and other public sector organizations employed public relations positioning techniques, to achieve communication goals.
