First Impressions

I met with one of the Animal Science professors about his views on language and power. The main consensus of the interview was simple: using the language of power is not only important, it is crucial to survival in the field of Animal Sciences. Because your speech or writing is the first thing potential customers or employers experience when communicating with you, it is important that your language does not give them any reason to question your technical competence or intelligence. For example, if you are a company representative and you send out a poorly-written letter to a potential client, the client may judge your entire company unworthy based on your unacceptable language skills. Companies who cannot get and keep clients don't survive for long.
Using the language of power can also be a determiner in other matters. Scientific journals are very selective about what they publish; papers with grammar errors or papers that aren't concise are turned down. If two competing scientists attempt to get their findings on the same subject published at the same time but one of them has grammatical errors in his paper, the other scientist will get the credit because his will be the only paper that gets published.
In addition to scientific journals, graduate schools are also very critical of writing which does not fit the standards of the language of power. In Animal Science, many students wish to become veterinarians; due to the small number of United States vet schools, admissions are very selective. Use of language can be a deciding factor between otherwise equal candidates.
So overall, even though Animal Science is a very science-and-results-based discipline, language is still an important factor.