by Niel de la Rouviere

Created on: January 18, 2009

Linguistic intelligence is fairly simple and could be more easily understood as linguistic competence. Linguistic competence is the knowledge of a certain language.

People with high linguistic intelligence can use their native language to better use than foreign speakers or others with only a normal understanding of the language they speak. A great sign of linguistic intelligence is in the use the puns. Puns require a great knowledge of your native language to understand as it uses two important linguistic areas, semantics and phonetics. Just think that if you are a foreign speaker of a language and a native speaker makes a pun, it will most definitely float over your head as you do not have the linguistic intelligence on par of that of the native speaker.

The linguistic areas include syntax (knowledge of sentence structure), morphology (knowledge of the smaller units of words), phonology (knowledge of the sounds of language) and semantics (knowledge of the meaning of words). If you combine all those areas with your vocabulary it forms your internal grammar. With this grammar you can define your linguistic intelligence.

People with high linguistic intelligence can often convey themselves better than others, they are witty, because they process the meaning and underlying pragmatics of words, they write better and are found to have a great general knowledge. They are often good public speakers as they can create sentences on the fly and generally be more creative with their words to evoke emotions and get their message across.

With linguistic intelligence you can also persuade people better as you have better vocabulary to convey what you mean. This is often known as neuro-linguistic programming. With neuro-linguistic programming knowledge you can influence those around you merely with you choice of words. This is often found in motivational speakers and political figures.

Linguistic intelligence is therefore a great asset to have as it makes you a great communicator. Exceptional writers such as Stephen King, Stephen Baxter and many others are also great examples of high linguistic intelligence. Thus, to improve your linguistic intelligence, you should definitely read more (newspapers, blogs, novels), write (keep a journal, blog, Helium) and pay attention to what others say. You should be amazed by how much you learn by listening to people's choice of words.

Next time when someone makes a lame pun, reconsider how much linguistic intelligence and quick thinking it took to create it.

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