Communication and Intelligence

We seem to measure intelligence by communication.

Granted, the “standardized” and “objective” measures of human intelligence, such as IQ tests, focus heavily on math and logic and pattern recognition and spatial reasoning. But in our normal, everyday lives, when we meet someone new, don’t we automatically assess the person’s brainpower by what and how well he communicates? If we know nothing else about two people, don’t we attribute a greater mental faculty to him who speaks with the thoughtful grammar and extensive vocabulary of a character out of Pride and Prejudice seems to possess a greater mental faculty than to him who makes gratuitous use of profanities, favors slang and lazy pronunciation, and haphazardly inserts the word “like” into his statements? Or, when we hire someone to say, fix a computer problem, don’t we think him more intelligent if he converses with us and explains to us how the computer thinks and why the problem occurred, instead of getting frustrated in his explanations or talking incessantly and incomprehensibly about some technological “thing”?

Perhaps this subconscious judgment is justified. After all, a large and properly used vocabulary is a sign of a well-educated person. Good communication requires a specific type of intelligence – that of knowing one’s subject matter, certainly, and of reasoning logically, and of reading one’s audience and understanding how to relate to them. Perhaps communication is not a bad standard for an off-hand measurement of intelligence.

But then, what happens when we communicate with someone whose native language is different from our own? When I was in college, several of my friends and acquaintances were international students. They came from Taiwan, Germany, Nigeria, Colombia, and a few dozen other nations, to study in the U.S. Some of them had been speaking English their entire lives; some had learned basic English just before they arrived.

As much as I love other cultures and try to be loving toward everybody, I found myself naturally drawn to those international students who could speak English almost as fluently as I, a native speaker, could. It was easier to exchange jokes and stories from our childhoods and commentary on music when we could understand each other without many confused looks. Although I tried not to feel this way, it was easy for me to get frustrated or bored when I would talk to a new friend with halting English.

And then I started thinking. All of these international students must be EXTREMELY smart. To travel half-way around the globe to study at a university where all classes are taught in a foreign language and only a few others (if any) can speak one's native tongue, must require incredible intelligence and stamina (not to mention courage). Especially for our friends from countries like China and Japan, whose studies required them to learn an entirely new alphabet, in addition to a language. Most American students struggle to keep up with classes in their own language, let alone a foreign one.

Yet, before I considered this, it was so easy for me to feel condescending toward a fellow student whose English was more limited than my own. Why? What causes us to judge someone's intelligence based on the ease with which they can communicate? Is it ever justified? And when it is not justified, what do we do about it?

Questions to ponder....