tantaman

The Language That Thinks For You

Published 2026-01-23

The political implications are significant. If half the country speaks therapy grammar and half speaks traditional moral grammar, and each grammar marks the other as pathological, then political discourse isn’t difficult — it’s impossible. You can’t debate someone whose speech registers to you as symptoms. You can’t compromise with someone who sounds morally insane. The grammar doesn’t just divide; it makes the other side unintelligible.

I. The Meeting Where Nothing Can Be Said

You’re sitting in a conference room. Everyone knows why you’re here: John is terrible at his job. He misses deadlines. His work is sloppy. Clients have complained. The solution is obvious — he should be fired.

But listen to what people actually say:

“I think there may be opportunities to better align John’s contributions with role expectations.”

“We should explore whether a structured performance improvement plan might help close some of these gaps.”

“It might be worth having a conversation about how we can better support John’s development trajectory.”

An hour passes. Nothing is decided. The meeting ends with action items about “checking in” and “providing feedback” and “revisiting in Q2.”

What happened?

The obvious explanation is cowardice or politeness — people didn’t want to say the hard thing. But that’s not quite right. Watch the faces in the room. These aren’t people biting their tongues, struggling to suppress what they really think. They’re fluent. They mean what they’re saying. The woman talking about “development trajectories” isn’t secretly thinking “fire him” and choosing softer words. She’s thinking in development trajectories. The grammar has become her thought.

You can test this. After the meeting, pull her aside and say: “Look, we both know John is incompetent and we should fire him. Why couldn’t we just say that in there?”

She won’t agree with you and admit the meeting was theater. She’ll be confused. She’ll think you’re the one who doesn’t understand. “It’s not that simple,” she’ll say. “There are development considerations. We need to follow process. Termination isn’t the only option.” She’s not covering for a shared unspoken truth. From inside her grammar, your plain statement sounds crude, reductive, perhaps even cruel. The grammar hasn’t just changed her words. It’s changed what she sees when she looks at John.

This is the phenomenon: a way of speaking that has become a way of thinking, which determines what can be thought at all.

II. Grammars Everywhere

Once you see this pattern, you find it everywhere.

The Raise You Can’t Ask For

You want more money. In plain English: “I want a raise. I’ve been here three years, I’m underpaid relative to market, and I’ll start looking elsewhere if this isn’t fixed.”

But that’s not how professionals talk. Instead:

“I’d like to discuss my compensation trajectory and explore how my expanded scope of responsibilities might be reflected in my total rewards package going forward.”

Notice what’s changed. The first statement has a clear agent (I), a clear demand (raise), a clear reason (underpaid), and a clear consequence (I’ll leave). It can be accepted or rejected. It creates a negotiation between two parties with different interests.

The second statement has none of this. “Compensation trajectory” turns a demand into a developmental process. “Explore” turns a negotiation into a collaborative inquiry. “Going forward” dissolves the present moment into an indefinite future. The statement cannot threaten. It cannot demand. It can only invite exploration.

And here’s what matters: after years of speaking this way, many people lose the ability to think the first thought. They don’t experience themselves as having interests opposed to their employer. They genuinely believe the question is about “alignment” and “trajectory.” The grammar has reorganized their self-understanding.

The Apology That Admits Nothing

A company makes a mistake. Flights are cancelled. Data is breached. Food is contaminated. What do they say?

“We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.”

Parse that sentence:

The sentence cannot admit fault. It cannot say “We made a mistake and you suffered because of it.” The grammar permits only the performance of apology, not its substance.

Customer service representatives aren’t being slippery or evasive. They’ve been trained in a grammar where fault-admission is simply not a well-formed move. They think in “inconveniences” and “situations” rather than in errors and harms.

The Accusation That Cannot Be Made

Your friend wrongs you. In plain English: “You betrayed my trust. That was cruel. Apologize.”

In therapy-speak:

“When you shared that information with others, I noticed I felt hurt and unsafe. I’m wondering if we can explore what was coming up for you in that moment, and how we might repair this rupture in our connection.”

The second version cannot accuse. It cannot assert that your friend did something wrong. It can only report your subjective feelings (”I felt hurt”) and invite collaborative exploration (”I’m wondering if we can explore”).

Within this grammar:

Someone who says “You wronged me, apologize” sounds aggressive, unsophisticated — someone who hasn’t “done the work.” But notice what’s been lost: the capacity to make moral claims, to hold others accountable, to assert that some actions are simply wrong regardless of how anyone feels about them.

This isn’t politically neutral. Therapy grammar has a cultural address: it’s the language of the progressive professional class. To speak it signals education, sophistication, membership in a particular social world. “I’m noticing some activation in my nervous system” places you somewhere — probably urban, probably credentialed, probably left-of-center.

And this creates a chasm. When someone fluent in therapy grammar encounters someone who speaks in traditional moral terms — right and wrong, virtue and vice, sin and forgiveness — they don’t hear a different framework. They hear pathology. “You wronged me” sounds like unprocessed trauma. “That was a sin” sounds like religious baggage. “You should be ashamed” sounds like abuse. The traditional speaker isn’t making a move in a different language game; they’re displaying symptoms.

The reverse is equally true. To someone who speaks traditional moral grammar, therapy-speak sounds evasive, slippery, morally unserious. “I’m wondering what was coming up for you” sounds like refusal to name evil. “I felt hurt” sounds like weakness, an unwillingness to stand behind a judgment. The therapy speaker isn’t sophisticated; they’re cowardly, unable to call a spade a spade.

This is why certain conversations are impossible. The progressive daughter home for Thanksgiving, the conservative father who won’t “validate her experience,” the mutual conviction that the other is not even wrong — just speaking nonsense, or worse, speaking in a way that reveals something broken in them. They’re not disagreeing about facts or values. They lack a shared grammar in which disagreement could occur. Each sounds to the other like someone who has failed to develop properly — the father “hasn’t done the work,” the daughter “has no moral backbone.”

The political implications are significant. If half the country speaks therapy grammar and half speaks traditional moral grammar, and each grammar marks the other as pathological, then political discourse isn’t difficult — it’s impossible. You can’t debate someone whose speech registers to you as symptoms. You can’t compromise with someone who sounds morally insane. The grammar doesn’t just divide; it makes the other side unintelligible.

The Apartment That Cannot Be Bad

You’re looking for an apartment. The listing says:

“Charming and cozy one-bedroom in an up-and-coming neighborhood. Perfect for someone who appreciates character and urban energy.”

Translation:

Everyone knows the code. But here’s the strange part: the listing cannot say “small, old apartment in a dangerous neighborhood.” It’s not that such a listing would be illegal or even ineffective. It’s that within real estate grammar, negative description is simply not a move that can be made. A real estate agent who wrote honest listings would be speaking a foreign language — not just violating norms, but failing to play the game at all.

III. The Structure of Grammatical Constraint

What do these examples have in common?

First: the constraint is not on words but on thoughts. HR grammar doesn’t ban the word “fire.” Therapy grammar doesn’t ban the word “wrong.” The grammars make certain configurations of meaning impossible to assemble. You can use any individual word, but you cannot construct the forbidden thought.

Second: fluent speakers don’t experience constraint. The HR manager doesn’t feel censored. She’s not biting her tongue, longing to say “fire him” but choosing softer words. She thinks in “performance improvement plans.” That is her thought, not a euphemism for a hidden thought. The grammar has become her mind.

Third: the grammar encodes a worldview without stating it. HR grammar encodes the view that employees are resources to be optimized, that all problems are developmental opportunities, that termination is a last resort after proper procedures. Therapy grammar encodes the view that there are no moral facts, only feelings; that all conflict is mutual; that accusation is aggression. But no one states these views. They’re built into the structure of what can be said.

Fourth: the grammar serves interests while appearing neutral. HR grammar protects companies from lawsuits. Therapy grammar protects therapists from taking sides. Customer service grammar protects corporations from admitting liability. Real estate grammar protects sellers from negative comparisons. But the grammars present themselves as simply “how professionals talk” — neutral, sophisticated, correct.

Fifth: resistance sounds like incompetence. Someone who says “fire him” in an HR meeting sounds unprofessional. Someone who says “you wronged me” in therapy sounds unenlightened. Someone who writes “small apartment in dangerous neighborhood” sounds like they don’t understand real estate. The grammar enforces itself by making alternatives sound like failures of sophistication rather than legitimate choices.

IV. How Grammars Propagate

Where do these grammars come from? How do they spread?

Origin: High-Status Institutions

Professional grammars typically emerge from prestigious institutions — law firms, consulting companies, business schools, therapy training programs. They develop in contexts where sophisticated-sounding language confers advantage: avoiding liability, signaling expertise, managing conflict, closing deals.

The grammar isn’t designed by committee. It evolves through countless interactions where certain phrasings succeed and others fail. Lawyers who avoid admitting fault don’t get sued. Consultants who speak in frameworks sound smart. Therapists who avoid taking sides don’t lose clients. The grammar that survives is the grammar that works — where “works” means serves the interests of the professionals who use it.

Transmission: Status Mimicry

How does the grammar spread beyond its origin point?

Through imitation. Junior employees mimic senior employees. Small companies mimic prestigious companies. Aspiring professionals mimic established professionals. The grammar is a status marker — speaking it signals that you belong, that you’re sophisticated, that you know how the game is played.

This creates a cascade. Once enough high-status people speak a certain way, ambitious people start speaking that way to signal affiliation. The grammar spreads not because anyone mandates it but because everyone wants to sound like the people above them.

Institutionalization: Training and Templates

Eventually the grammar becomes institutionalized. HR departments create templates. Business schools teach case studies. Professional certifications require demonstrated fluency. What began as informal high-status speech becomes formal professional requirement.

At this point the grammar is self-sustaining. New entrants must learn it to participate. They’re not taught that this is one way of speaking among others; they’re taught that this is how professionals talk. The grammar becomes invisible — not a choice but simply “how things are done.”

Internalization: Grammar Becomes Thought

The final stage: the grammar colonizes thought itself. People who’ve spoken HR grammar for twenty years don’t just talk that way — they think that way. The categories of the grammar become the categories of their perception. They don’t see an incompetent employee who should be fired; they see a development opportunity. They don’t feel exploited; they feel “misaligned with role expectations.”

This is the endpoint: a grammar that began as a professional convenience becomes a mental prison. The speakers don’t experience it as prison because they can’t conceive of the thoughts they’ve lost the ability to think.

V. Recognizing the Bars

How do you know when a grammar has captured you?

Sign 1: Difficulty with plain speech. Try to express a professional thought in plain, concrete language. “I’d like to discuss my compensation trajectory” becomes... what? “I want more money.” If that translation feels crude, aggressive, unsophisticated — the grammar has you. Plain speech sounds wrong because you’ve internalized the grammar’s judgment that plain speech is wrong.

Sign 2: Invisible constraints. Try to express criticism, refusal, or accusation within a professional grammar. Try to say “this is bad and we shouldn’t do it” in corporate-speak. Try to say “you wronged me” in therapy-speak. If you can’t find the words — not because they’re forbidden but because the thought won’t assemble — you’ve found the grammar’s edges.

Sign 3: Status judgment. Notice your reaction when someone violates the grammar. If a colleague says “fire him” instead of “explore performance management options,” do you flinch? Do you judge them as unsophisticated? That flinch is the grammar enforcing itself through you.

Sign 4: Thought follows speech. Notice whether you can still think thoughts you can’t professionally say. If you’ve lost the ability to think “my employer is exploiting me” and can only think “there may be opportunities to better align expectations” — the grammar has colonized not just your speech but your mind.

VI. Theoretical Foundations

The pattern described here has been analyzed by philosophers under various names.

Ludwig Wittgenstein argued that meaning arises from “language games” — structured activities with rules that determine what counts as a legitimate move. Within a language game, some moves are well-formed and others are nonsensical, not because of formal grammar but because of social practice. What we’ve called “professional grammars” are language games: structured practices that determine what can meaningfully be said.

Wittgenstein also emphasized that language games are embedded in “forms of life” — entire ways of living and acting. HR grammar isn’t just a way of talking; it’s embedded in a form of life that includes performance reviews, improvement plans, documented feedback, and liability concerns. The grammar and the practice are inseparable.

Friedrich Nietzsche observed that “we are not rid of God because we still believe in grammar.” His point: the structure of our language — subject-verb-object, cause-and-effect, agent-and-action — encodes metaphysical assumptions we’re not aware of. We think in certain patterns because our grammar compels us to. What Nietzsche saw in the deep structure of language, we can see more visibly in professional grammars: the structure determines the thought.

Pierre Bourdieu developed the concept of “habitus” — the unconscious dispositions we acquire through socialization that shape our perception, thought, and action. Professional grammars are part of professional habitus: ways of speaking that become ways of perceiving that become ways of being. Bourdieu emphasized that habitus operates below conscious awareness; it’s not a choice but a formation. This is why fluent speakers of HR grammar don’t experience constraint — the constraint is constitutive of their professional self.

Michel Foucault analyzed how “discourses” — structured ways of talking about a subject — determine what can be known and said about it. Medical discourse determines what counts as illness. Legal discourse determines what counts as crime. Professional discourses determine what counts as competence, success, proper behavior. For Foucault, discourse is never neutral; it always serves power, not through crude prohibition but through subtle shaping of the thinkable.

Antonio Gramsci introduced the concept of “hegemony” — dominance achieved not through force but through the consent of the dominated. The dominant class leads by making its worldview seem natural, obvious, common-sense. Professional grammars are micro-hegemonies: they make certain arrangements of power seem natural by making alternatives seem unspeakable.

These theorists converge on a single insight: language is not a transparent medium for expressing pre-existing thoughts. Language shapes thought. And the structure of language is not neutral — it encodes assumptions, distributes power, and determines what can be conceived.

VII. Beyond Professional Grammar

The examples in this essay have been domestic: workplaces, therapy sessions, customer service calls. But the mechanism scales.

If professional grammars can shape what can be thought in a conference room, can’t larger grammars shape what can be thought in a society? If HR grammar serves the interests of employers while appearing neutral, can’t civilizational grammars serve the interests of ruling classes while appearing like simple common sense?

This is precisely what happens. The grammars of elite institutions — international organizations, academic disciplines, credentialing bodies, prestige media — function the same way as HR grammar, but at civilizational scale. They determine what can be said about global governance, economic policy, technological change, social organization. They make certain thoughts speakable and others impossible to formulate.

Consider: When did you last hear someone in a position of institutional authority say “this policy serves the rich at the expense of the poor”? Or “this organization exists to perpetuate its own power”? Or “we have no legitimate authority to make this decision”?

These thoughts aren’t prohibited. They’re grammatically ill-formed within institutional discourse. They can’t be assembled from the available pieces. The grammar provides “stakeholder engagement” and “evidence-based policy” and “inclusive governance” — but not “class interest” or “illegitimate authority” or “power masquerading as expertise.”

The same mechanism that makes “fire him” unsayable in a conference room makes “this is class warfare” unsayable at Davos.

VIII. Conclusion: The Grammar You Speak, The Grammar That Speaks You

We began with a conference room where an obvious truth couldn’t be spoken. We end with a question: How many truths can you not speak — and therefore cannot think — because the grammar you’ve internalized provides no way to assemble them?

This isn’t a call to reject all professional language. Language games are how meaning happens; there’s no view from nowhere, no grammar-free speech. The point isn’t to escape grammar but to see it — to recognize when a way of speaking has become a way of thinking, to notice what the grammar makes sayable and what it forecloses.

The first step is simple: try to translate. Take something you’d say at work and put it in plain English. Take something you’d say in therapy and state it as a direct moral claim. If the translation feels violent, crude, impossible — you’ve found a place where grammar is doing your thinking for you.

The harder step: ask who benefits. When a grammar makes certain thoughts unspeakable, whose interests does that silence serve? When a way of talking makes power invisible, who holds that power?

And the hardest step: try to think the thought anyway. It will feel wrong. It will feel unsophisticated, aggressive, naive. That feeling is the grammar defending itself. Push through it. The thought on the other side might be one you need.

Related:

For an extended analysis of how this mechanism operates in global elite institutions, see: “Grammar as Alignment: Power Through the Unsayable — A Case Study of the World Economic Forum’s Linguistic Hegemony.”