What Is Violent and Weaponized Language in the Workplace?

Militaristic and weaponized language in the workplace normalizes violence, reinforces hierarchies, and erodes psychological safety.

Over time, it creates a culture of internal competition and dominance. It can also surface trauma responses for employees who have experienced racial trauma, gender violence, bullying, and other forms of harm.

And yet, weaponized, violent, and militaristic language is ubiquitous in professional contexts:

📍Bullet points.
📍Hitting targets or benchmarks.
📍Gun metaphors like “I’m shooting for” or “give it a shot” or “shooting down an idea.”
📍Military metaphors in health care, such as “fighting cancer” or “the war on Alzheimer’s.”
📍”Destroying the competition.”
📍”Take a stab at it.”
📍”Killing it.”
📍”Diehard” - originally referred to those who struggled the hardest when they were hanged.
📍”Meeting deadlines.”

Does that last one surprise you?

The origin of the word deadline is typically traced to the inhumane conditions in Confederate prison camps in the 1860s. Prisoners were subject to hunger, overcrowding, violence and disease – conditions which killed thousands of people. Desperate Union soldiers held captive in Confederate prisons were shot for crossing a “dead line”—a line drawn around or within a prison, sometimes imaginary or marked by stakes, fencing, or a trench.

I now use the terms “due date” or “deliverable” instead of deadline.

👉🏽How are you embracing nonviolent, decolonial, and inclusive communication on your team?

ID: Image credit: Elizabeth Grimes Consulting. https://elizabethgrim.com/adopting-inclusive-and-non-violent-language-part-2/