The Way We Talk Around Here: How Your Organization’s Culture Shows Up in Your Language and Why It Matters

The unspoken rules and unquestioned assumptions that make up an organization’s culture are so well hidden that, once we become insiders, we stop noticing them. They’re just ’the way we do things around here’. But shared internal language - ’the way we talk around here’ - both reflects and sustains the unconscious patterns of thought, behaviour and interaction that add up to culture. So examining an organization’s language is a powerful and pragmatic way to shed light on its culture.

Gill Ereaut describes how to uncover organizational and team cultures through paying close attention to the language used by insiders. Discover:

- How and why an organization’s internal language can point to the silent assumptions that underpin its culture

- How to use language patterns to identify unconscious rules and norms, often rooted in the past, so people can work out which still serve the organization well, and which don’t

- Practical tools to help everyone reshape unhelpful shared habits of thinking, and generate effective, continuous and positive change.

If you’re responsible for guiding an organizational or team culture - or if you’re trying to thrive within one - find out how listening to language can help you map, understand and even inspire change within that culture.

Gill Ereaut is a linguistic consultant specializing in analyzing corporate cultures and their effects. She founded UK consultancy Linguistic Landscapes Ltd in 2002, pioneering the commercial application of language analysis to organizational challenges.