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In workplace communications generally and in situations of risk at work in particular, the use of natural language can be a barrier to quick and effective understanding. This leads to many pitfalls - ill-grasped meanings, or meanings which vary according to the interlocutors or the extralinguistic situation, implied meanings, ambiguous specialist terminology - all of which worsen with the urgency of the situation. One of the aims of this paper is to show how putting a technical malfunction into words can be an aspect of professional risk. Using authentic examples of workplace interactions, we show how this range of linguistic and extralinguistic factors (natural language, varying degrees of expertise, type of malfunction, tense or urgent work situation) may contribute to defining language risk in the workplace. More specifically, we present a description of categories of semantic information which, when expressing a technical malfunction, give rise to long, unclear or meaningless exchanges which undermine effective comprehension. We also show that the notion of expertise (operational priorities, knowledge sharing etc.) is closely linked to the risk which natural language can produce in tense work situations.