The Language of Organizational Communication

Authors

Noah M. Davidson, Cedarville UniversityFollow

Department/School of the Primary Author

English, Literature, and Modern Languages

Keywords

organizational communication, organizational language, professional jargon, admissions, keyness analysis

DOI

https://doi.org/10.15385/jch.2025.9.1.1

Abstract

Organizational communication is a broad field that has been studied extensively in many contexts. However, there was limited research on the specific vocabulary, features, surrounding attitudes, and effects of the language of organizational communication. I conducted a case study on an admissions office at a small private university in the midwestern United States to explore this topic. I observed the admissions counselors and collected audio data on internal conversations amongst them and interactions with prospective students and their families. I then transcribed the audio into a corpus and conducted a keyness analysis for the most important and frequent words in both their interactions with each other and their interactions with guests. With the results of the keyness analysis I constructed a survey of all the admissions counselors on the team and also interviewed three counselors. I found that there were professional jargon terms used frequently in internal conversations among counselors but avoided with guests. I also found that there were specialized non-jargon terms that the counselors used frequently with guests but never with each other. Additionally, I found that computer-mediated communication and small talk were also key elements of the organizational language within the admissions office. Finally, I found that the counselors felt that the environment and culture of the admissions office was motivating and comfortable with open and frequent communication listed as the primary factor for this. In this paper, I further detail these various findings and discuss their practical implications for both this small university admissions office and other organizations.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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Copyright

© Noah Davidson. All rights reserved.

Recommended Citation

Davidson, Noah M. (2025) "The Language of Organizational Communication," Channels: Where Disciplines Meet: Vol. 9: No. 1, Article 1.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15385/jch.2025.9.1.1
Available at: https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/channels/vol9/iss1/1