Language and Intelligence – Are You as Dumb as You Sound?

We subconsciously use language complexity as an indicator of how intelligent the speaker is. If someone is able to use big and complicated words then it makes sense that they are probably both intelligent and well educated. When this is backed up by what we see we are able to build a picture of a person that is reliable most of the time. However when we are reading something that has been written by a person we have never met and have no further information about then it is very easy to get the wrong idea about a person.

An email written in a hurry can contain any number of typos and grammatical errors. Whilst we are able to overlook them on a conscious level they do leave a lasting impression on the unconscious mind. Time spent checking your writing can really stop you looking like an idiot. The brain often jumps to unreasonable conclusions when faced with minimal information and may paint a picture that is far from the truth.

In today's world we can often have dealings with people we never meet or even speak to on the telephone. No matter how advanced our technology has become our brains are still using methods to gauge people that haven't changed for thousands of years. We go through a number of steps to assess someone we are meeting for the first time, even by email. Are they a threat? The tone of your language can be threatening, friendly, submissive, apologetic etc. What is my hierarchical relationship to this person? We gauge the social standing of strangers and measure it against our own to work out if they are an equal or lower or higher than us on the social scale. Simple or poorly constructed language may have you marked down as being inferior by those you write to. Conversely using overly complicated words and constructions may either make you appear be a superior snob looking down on others or just overly intellectual and distant.

Where the real complications come in is when you add non-native speakers to the mix. Imagine a highly respected academic trying to give a talk in a language he barely knows. Even though his grasp of his subject may be second to none his grasp of the language may be equivalent to that of a child and those listening may leave with an impression far less than he deserves. If this can happen to someone at the top of their field what do you think happens to the rest of us? Yes, we can sound like idiots! This is mitigated by a sympathetic listener and meeting someone face to face where other factors come into play. However, if the only communicate is written (be it in a letter, email, advert, blog or forum comment) then there is scope for leaving a lasting negative impression of ourselves that it hard to shake even after face to face meetings later on.

It is difficult to get every email we send in another language checked by a native speaker but website and print media copy needs to be checked and double checked for errors and the overall tone of the piece. It is all to easy for even an accomplished non-native speaker to make a mistake, especially with idiomatic phrases. So if you do business with people who speak a language different from your own make sure that you're not being unfairly judged by how you say things.