Organizational Development: A Manual for Managers and ... - FPDL

The sequence of artificial signals (may be symbols or words) that transfers in a coded form certain
content, constitutes a message.
The more primitive language is (or the smaller number of various words it has and consequently
the smaller capacity of each word), the more words or longer message is needed to transfer
certain informational content. That is probably why most primitive creatures used to speak a lot …
that’s a joke. They just like to communicate. Content is not the point.
In order to transfer more ‘delicate’ (gradation of more tiny details), or more ‘complex’ (gradation of
more variable senses) content within the acceptable time limit, one should use a rich language that
possesses more available words and their combinations. However, as in the case of signals, using
more powerful language does not automatically mean transferring more information.
Language hierarchy
If some groups of words may be recognized as having certain invariable meanings and could be
assigned on this basis to a category of universal meaning – then for that category and related
meanings, a new special word may be introduced – let say ‘a food’, or ‘a colour’, or ‘a servant’, etc.
Thus a language of another level may be created – in this case it could be called metalanguage.
One word in metalanguage substitutes for many words of basic language, but also looses a big
part of the informational content. Sometimes it is not important (e.g. it does not matter if it is a
carrot or a tomato – just vegetables), and then usage of metalanguage saves a lot of time by
transferring one important feature or phenomenon, while not overloading channels of
communication with details. However, there is big danger. Any generalization causes a loss of
information. This lost information may be very important for making practical decisions and
organizing corresponding actions.
Metalanguages are widely used in sciences and other abstract applications, and some people
think that use of a metalanguage evidences their outstanding literacy. They say ‘a vehicle’, instead
of saying ‘a car’, and ‘a vessel’ instead of ‘a motorboat’, and so on. In fact, they use the same
number of words, or sometimes need many more words to transfer similar content. It makes
communication very complicated and looks more stupid than literal. One great word is a
metalanguage for all that – it is ‘bullshit’.
With regard to organizations, it should now be clear that when a hierarchical structure is in place,
each level of controllers operate with their own language, which is a metalanguage for
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