Context
When you're deep inside a category, domain or market, its familiar language becomes invisible to you. But the thinking and unspoken truths that language conceals may have real consequences for you.
The water we swim in
Common language surrounding any phenomenon both reflects and underlines the assumptions and value judgements of the day. But both language and thinking change over time – the cheerful ‘plump’ of 1950s Britain became the medicalised, demonised ‘obese’ of today. Public language is powerful because it makes certain truths hard to dispute, and sets up a shorthand for making value judgements about things and people.
Language matters
Unquestioned truths in your cultural and competitive environment shape how resources are allocated – funds, attention, sympathy and more – and determine how effective your brand and communications can be. This matters especially if you are trying to disrupt a market, or change the way something like a disease or an industry is perceived. Language is both the route to revealing those truths and a powerful tool for changing them.
Map your context
With a map of your context - the taken-for-granted truths and unspoken ideas that surround your business - you can plan how to deal with it. You might work within that discourse, carefully begin to change it, or radically disrupt it. Analysis creates a road map to help you navigate or even change the truths that matter to you.
"I use LL because they give me insight that I can’t get elsewhere and also because I know that senior people within the organisation - because it’s evidence based - will also understand it. And then the organisation can actually do something with the output, rather than just go 'Isn't that interesting?' "
"We also needed to be paying some attention to the internal culture. But that’s a very hard thing to do because usually you don’t have a language to talk about it. I mean culture is a terribly nebulous word, so I thought of Linguistic Landscapes as a way of making that tangible"
"It has the power also to get to the root of the problem before you get further down the line, like you can create the platform for the whole of your communication strategy with some good work from Linguistic Landscapes, that will help inform your communications development for years to come."
"It was actually commissioned to do something quite specific and it ended up changing a lot of the communication of the organisation in the broadest sense. It gave the organisation a really distinct voice and allowed us to create change."
"It is something tangible and real, in a way that anybody can actually understand, rather than becoming abstract and conceptual, which is often the problem with cultural models."
"It’s often shining a light on something that everybody knows but nobody’s really thought about before ... they are able to highlight different themes and give them a significance that they haven't had before. It’s so powerful because it’s always a real lightbulb moment."
“I was not entirely sure what to expect. There was, therefore, a little nervousness about investing the money. (But) we have been able to drive a very challenging conversation about organisational approaches to communication and campaigning. It has thrown up profound and far reaching challenges to (our) core communications approach - the research helped shine a specific and credible light into some very difficult areas.”
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