In the present decade, many management and organizational communication scholars have explored a guiding metaphor--organizational culture. Japanese industry has developed a corporate model that may have provided the concepts involved in organizational culture: ideology, beliefs, rituals, myths, and symbols. Organizational culture is inextricably interwoven with speech communication, but organizational communication entails more than just speech communication. A recent survey has found that professional communicators rate the ability to define corporate and communications objectives as their most important concerns. Technical writing is also a prime concern of corporate professionals. The manner in which organizations and the people who work within them use language is directly related to the concept of organizational culture, since language is the prime element with which values are articulated and communications are transmitted and understood. (MS)