The Tone Police and the Face-Threat Reversal

Fluent Enough to Pass: The Standard That Was Never Neutral

You walk into an exam room. The test is supposed to measure whether you can use English. The writing section: write a 250-word essay on “the advantages and disadvantages of online learning.” You have 30 minutes. Introduction, thesis statement, three body paragraphs, conclusion. Grammar correct. Vocabulary recognisable. Structure clear. Linear. You write it. You score well. The test confirms it: you are “proficient.” Three months later, you’re in a university classroom. A professor asks what you think about a reading. Your classmates interrupt mid-sentence, build on each other’s ideas, speak over the edges of sentences. You wait for your turn. You construct a thesis. By the time you finish your setup, the conversation has moved on. Later, a colleague asks you for something you need to turn down. You give a clear, direct no, the way the test trained you to write and speak. Your colleague reads it as blunt. Something in the relationship breaks—but your accuracy is flawless. The test never measured your capacity to do either of these things. 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 [https://thestrategiclinguist.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

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 [https://thestrategiclinguist.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

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 [https://thestrategiclinguist.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

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 [https://thestrategiclinguist.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

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 [https://thestrategiclinguist.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]