Be alive to what your words carry

Why It Matters

The words we use carry more than meaning. They carry images, mental models, and assumptions that can restrict or expand what becomes possible. "Targeting interventions" and "nurturing conditions" describe similar activities—but they invite entirely different ways of thinking about change.

Being alive to this means noticing what we might be implying, what frames we're reinforcing, what we're making harder to see. It means recognizing that language borrowed from military, medical, engineering, or extractive contexts brings those logics with it—often without our awareness. And it means tending to how stories are framed as they move into reports, presentations, and campaigns. The same story can be diminished or dignified by the words surrounding it.

What This Looks Like

 A team reviewing their grant narrative notices how much military and engineering language has crept in: "strategic targeting," "leveraging interventions," "deploying resources." They pause to ask what these metaphors assume—and what alternatives might open different possibilities. They experiment with language rooted in cultivation, relationship, and emergence. The same work, described differently, invites different responses.

Try This

Review your language for a recent project. Circle every military, medical, engineering, or extractive metaphor. For each one, ask: What does this assume about how change happens? Who is positioned as agent, and who as object? What alternative might hold this more honestly? Stay alive to the images and mental models your words evoke.

  • Metaphor and Language Audit

  • Listening Frequencies Guide (Language and Metaphor frequency)

Watch For

Assuming that language is neutral or that jargon is inevitable. Also watch for replacing one set of metaphors with another without examining what they carry. And watch for "cleaning up" language in ways that sanitize or flatten what was actually said.

“Our language isn/t neutral. ‘Deploying’ interventions versus ‘offering’ support—those words carry entire worldviews.”
— Glenn Page