What is language actually good for?

Summary

Acclaimed Australian linguist Professor Nick Enfield has come to the conclusion that language is good for lawyers, for the purposes of persuasion, but bad for scientists who seek to accurately represent reality. It’s a fascinating idea he explores in his new book Language vs Reality. What can language describe and where does it fail?

This episode from the BBC’s Word of Mouth Series with Michael Rosen has so much to say about communication in projects and the dangers of favouring engineering or technical project language, because it is deemed to be scientific over the language of advocacy and influence, which is often far more effective at describing how things are in a complex major project and where the outcomes will lead us.

Listen to the episode