How does terminology affect how we perceive ourselves as professionals? This project focuses on terminology surrounding labour; treating language as infrastructure which effects pay, legislation and self-perception. 

Unpacking how vocational terminology is formed with regards to: 1.ownership (ex. The proletariat), 2.skills (ex. Unskilled), 3.profession (ex. Engineer), and conditions of labour (ex. The precariat), it aims to reclaim terminological systems to promote self-identification. Responding to the shifting nature of the labour market, it proposes the linguistic separation of identity from profession, by action-based descriptions: ex. I engineer, rather than I am an engineer. 

The presented diagram re-appropriates the schematic of the Viable System Model (VSM), an organisational structure able to adapt to changing contexts often used to describe governmental and/or commercial entities. Its application to an individuals’ vocational activity allows for self-definition.