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

Ask this episode

“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

Transcript

Related