The Strategic Linguist Podcast

The Strategic Linguist

Revealing how language shapes power, markets, and competitive advantage | Expert analysis from workplace dynamics to global strategy thestrategiclinguist.substack.com

  1. -4 j

    Who Died and Made You CEO: Genre Mimicry, Epistemic Trespassing, and the Applause Machine

    LinkedIn has a genre problem. Not a content problem — the platform has always traded in self-presentation. A genre problem: the systematic borrowing of executive discourse by speakers who have not yet occupied the positions that discourse was built to describe. These posts share a structure. They borrow a register. And LinkedIn applauds every one of them. The standing ovation is the mechanism worth examining. Today, we’re looking at what makes it work — linguistically, structurally, and socially — and why the platform was built to make it inevitable. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thestrategiclinguist.substack.com/subscribe

    16 min

  2. 25 juin

    The Story Behind My Logo

    What my logo means, and why it represents The Strategic Linguist so well This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thestrategiclinguist.substack.com/subscribe

    16 min
  3. The Linguistic Hierarchy of Substack: Linguistics Unfiltered

    23 juin

    The Linguistic Hierarchy of Substack: Linguistics Unfiltered

    Subscriber count is the linguistic hierarchy on Substack, for me. I think Bourdieu would agree. I’ve dedicated 52 weeks, over 45,000 words, to showing how power shows up in language, I must’ve learned a thing or two by now, right? Don't forget to see my post for a special discount to celebrate my one year anniversary This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thestrategiclinguist.substack.com/subscribe

    17 min

  4. 16 juin

    The Double Register: How Workplace Power Now Compounds Itself

    Picture a team meeting. Someone makes a comment about a colleague’s accent — not a slur, nothing disciplinable, just a brief impression. The room moves on. Later, the same colleague submits a report drafted partly with AI assistance; their manager, who also uses AI but would never say so, flags the writing as “not quite right.” Both moments feel minor. Neither registers as an event. Together, they enact something more systematic than either appears to be alone. Power in contemporary workplaces has always operated on multiple registers simultaneously, but two of those registers are now converging in ways the research is now documenting directly. The first is interpersonal: who can say what to whom, encoded through the micro-level linguistic acts that determine belonging. The second is infrastructural: who can use AI fluently, and whose linguistic style AI systems are built to reward. These two registers compound each other, and recent research lets us name how. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thestrategiclinguist.substack.com/subscribe

    20 min

  5. 9 juin

    How Product Language Shapes the Gap Between Institution and User

    Ask someone how they’re doing financially and watch what happens. The pause before the answer. The slight shift in posture. The decision — usually in under a second — about how much to reveal and to whom. Money carries a story people tell about themselves. Whether they’re competent, responsible, secure. Whether they belong in certain conversations, deserve certain things, are the kind of person who has their finances under control. The emotional stakes of that story are high enough that most people will avoid an honest financial conversation with their closest friends before they’ll have it casually with a colleague. And yet the products built to help people manage that story — the apps, the platforms, the onboarding flows, the error messages — are built without any examination of what the language in them is doing to the person on the other side. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thestrategiclinguist.substack.com/subscribe

    22 min

  6. 4 juin

    The Tone Police and the Face-Threat Reversal

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thestrategiclinguist.substack.com Speech Act Theory, and the frameworks that follow, describe what language does in social spaces — the structural effects it produces in interaction. They say nothing about what any individual speaker consciously intends to produce. That is the theoretical position this series has taken from the start: the mechanism operates independently of motive. Goffman was mapping patterns of interaction, not taxonomies of bad faith. This work sits in the space between linguistics and lived experience — which means it is sometimes more certain about the mechanism than about the person. That is not a limitation to apologise for. It is the honest boundary of what structural analysis can and cannot do.

    10 min

  7. 2 juin

    The Conversation That Was Never About You

    The Intention Shield and the Perlocutionary Fallacy Imagine you are parked at a red light, and another driver rear-ends your car. The impact is loud, your bumper is dented, and your neck is sore. The other driver gets out, looks at the wreckage, and says, calmly: “I didn’t intend to hit you.” Statistically, they are probably telling the truth. They likely didn’t wake up that morning planning to cause a collision. But notice what their lack of intent doesn’t do: it doesn’t fix your bumper. It doesn’t heal your whiplash. They are still legally and financially responsible for the fallout of their actions, regardless of what was going on inside their head at the moment of impact. In professional and personal communication, we don’t apply the same logic. The moment someone drops the phrase “but that wasn’t my intention,” a strange distortion occurs. We are expected to perform a ritual of immediate absolution. We are expected to pretend the bumper isn’t dented. This part 1 of the series where we’ll look the language of power in professional conversations. Part 1 names the mechanism. Part 2 maps what happens when you challenge it. Part 3 examines the most sophisticated escalation — when defence becomes offence and the moral high ground gets weaponised. Each post builds on the last. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thestrategiclinguist.substack.com/subscribe

    15 min

  8. 26 mai

    Why “I’m Giving You Your Time Back” Is a Power Play

    Brené Brown and Adam Grant were talking about how to politely end a conversation in a recent episode of “The Curosity Shop”. Adam mentioned something he hears often: when a meeting ends early, you’ll hear the phrase: “I’m going to give you your time back.” Brené heard that and her face changed. She recognised something linguistically that most people miss. Adam continued, “One of my biggest pet peeves,” he said. “You don’t own my time. You can’t give it to me. Like, this is a coordinated decision.” What they identified—linguistically—is one of the most elegant power moves in professional speech. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thestrategiclinguist.substack.com/subscribe

    11 min
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À propos

Revealing how language shapes power, markets, and competitive advantage | Expert analysis from workplace dynamics to global strategy thestrategiclinguist.substack.com

Informations

  • Création
    The Strategic Linguist
  • Années d’activité
    2025 - 2026
  • Épisodes
    51
  • Classification
    Tous publics
  • Copyright
    © Rebecca Wicker
  • Site web de l’émission
    The Strategic Linguist Podcast