<p>Not sure I see this as a sort of “social intelligence” type of thing. That sounds like one is saying that if they have to consciously dumb down their vocabulary that they may unconsciously (or consciously for that matter) think they are brighter or better educated or something. Seems a tad supercilious. I tend to see it the other way. I don’t assume people are less intelligent or less educated or less familiar with these words. I assume the best, and treat them the way I’d want to be treated. I am guessing that the Harvard braniac may feel the same way.</p>
<p>One observation I have, from my own experience, is that people who attended more selective colleges are more likely than those who didn’t to have a lot of interests outside of their field of work–they are somewhat less likely to engage in “shop talk” all the time. Clearly, there are many counterexamples, but I do think that the more selective colleges promote more cross-discipline interests, particularly in “artsy-fartsy” stuff. This is something that may matter a lot to some people, and not at all to others.</p>
<p>And I think that the question of big words is really a red herring, unless you talk like William F. Buckley all the time. However, I do think that you may find significant differences among people you know in what they’re interested in talking about, and some of those differences may be due to differences in educational background. You may have a friend that you talk sports with, but not poetry. I don’t think that’s a big deal in real life, most of the time. You can look for people who share your interests, and try to develop more interests yourself. But in college, you might want a pretty big critical mass of people who want to talk about poetry.</p>
<p>Maybe I misunderstood the first posts on this conversation/socializing/vocabulary business. But the impression I got was that there were folks who felt under some sort of burden to keep their vocabulary/thoughts at a certain level in normal conversation, lest their intense and lofty ruminations burst out and completely befuddle (or worse yet, alienate) the people around them. That is honestly the impression I got. I apologize if I read too much into it.</p>
<p>I don’t see it as that difficult. I’m not talking about discussing esoteric details from my personal field of expertise. I’m talking about day to day conversations with people, some of which may touch on things I know something about beyond the typical person on the street… If somebody asks about digital filters, I don’t need to give a mathematical treatise on the z-transform. And I don’t. Not because I assume they won’t understand it. Mostly because I don’t think they care, and I’m a little shaky on it myself Most of my job is writing things for the public, and testifying as an expert witness in technical proceedings. I happen to believe most people can understand a lot. </p>
<p>Besides, a lot of laypeople think they know more about the field I work in than I do anyway. Who cares?</p>
<p>As an example, I have a BIL who’s very bright but not particularly learned. I think today he would be diagnosed as LD but back when he was in school was just thought to be a kid who hated to read. As a result he turned into an adult who…hates to read. He’s done well in his profession and, I repeat, is a smart guy, but if I dropped a reference to Schrodinger’s cat or Proust’s madeleine into a conversation with him he would look at me like I had a second head, and a not particularly attractive one at that.</p>
<p>Perhaps you mean “6th grade formal education”, because it looks like he is *self-*educated so that he is much more educated that one would expect from someone whose education stopped after 6th grade.</p>
<p>There is a Robert A. Heinlein story about a group of super-geniuses who develop a special language that allows them to communicate highly complex ideas in just a few words. People like that might have to remember not to use it with outsiders.</p>
<p>I think what’s really up here is that some people are saying that they have to remember to do something (lay off the big words when talking to people who might not understand them) that other people also do, but unconsciously. Since the person who said she has to do this deliberately is a teenager, it’s possible that some of us just don’t remember the process of learning how to do this without thinking about it. And I have to say, I have encountered a few people who didn’t realize that they were using terms (and especially acronyms) that their audience had no clue about.</p>
<p>And one other thing: I distinctly remember girls in my high school who deliberately dumbed themselves down because they thought boys wouldn’t like it if they seemed too brainy. They admitted that they did this. Is this obsolete? I hope so, but I don’t know.</p>
<p>^Ucbalumnus,
Yes that is what I meant. He has independently educated himself through literature, life experience and a stimulating social group. He’s a great intellectual match for my PhD MIL; a Renaissance man but still a very quiet, humble guy.</p>
<p>“they were using terms (and especially acronyms) that their audience had no clue about”</p>
<p>Happens all the time if you are sitting through college presentations or CC for that matter if someone just started browsing around here. Only last week some kid was asking what a D was.</p>
<p>Actually, as an undergrad at a state school, I encountered some math majors taking real analysis and the like as frosh, and graduate level math courses as sophomores or juniors. So it is not like only elite colleges would provide sufficient math offerings for them, although such students do need to check course offerings carefully when looking for colleges to apply to (undergraduate-only liberal arts colleges would likely be poor academic fits for them).</p>
People do that all the time on here when conversations drift off in the software/programming direction. But I just assume there’s a reason for it that they all understand.</p>
<p>Heck, students on CC use HS club and organization acronyms I’ve never heard of, but its normal in their world, so it probbly doesnt occur to them to spell it out for the rest of us clueless folk.</p>
<p>My DH is a voracious reader. Happy as a clam when his nose is in a book. Been true all his life. He happened to have grown up overseas, which is just a slight PS part to this story. At any rate, he occasionally mispronounces words, because that’s how he “heard them” in his head when he was reading. He uses the words appropriately, just mispronounces them. The one that sticks in my head is “carrel” as in a study carrel. He puts the accent on the wrong syllable. I annoyingly correct him. Yet its a hard habit to break (the mispronunciation and the annoying correction habits )</p>
<p>This may sound apropos of nothing, but its meant as an example of learning on ones own rather than in a classroom or one’s social sphere where these things were in low density, as it were.</p>
<p>** crossposted with many like-minded cc’ers.</p>
<p>Ah, texaspg, context and audience really do matter, don’t they? For my teens D is used as an abbreviation for a-not-ready-for-prime-time word ending in “che.”</p>
The problem I’m having with this conversation is that every time somebody makes a fairly modest claim–like the claim that virtually everybody at Harvard will have already taken calculus, and a large number will have more advanced math–somebody responds that this isn’t true only at Harvard. Well, sure. Nobody said that, any more than anybody on this thread said that only graduates of 8 schools can get jobs, or that smart kids can only find friends at “elite” colleges. ucbalumnus, I don’t mean to go off on you, because your statement is sensible compared to some of the others in this vein. But please, people, if I say that McDonald’s has the best fries, I’m not saying that it’s the only fast food place with edible fries.</p>
<p>Most of the academically gifted kids at D’s high school focused their attention on math and science (cultural bias at work.) Consequently, D had not encountered too many smart kids who were interested in history or politics. When she attended a Governor’s School social studies program, she returned invigorated from spending 2 weeks with bright kids with similar interests. That is when she began talking about applying to elite schools, since her new friends planned on applying as well and she wanted to be with kids like them. Interestingly, her active vocabulary was much improved after she returned from Governor’s School. Given that she had already scored an 800 on the SAT, it wasn’t that she didn’t know all those fancy words before, but rather that she couldn’t ever use them around the high school and so got in the habit of not using them ever.</p>
<p>I work sometimes with children and teens, and sometimes have to explain a word. I do think about my vocabulary. When I was leading groups in a residential facility, I’d have someone write the word on the blackboard (white board, really), if I or someone else used a word someone didn’t know. I brought a dictionary into the room. Sometimes I’d catch someone looking thru the dictionary in order to find a “good” word, then use it in group, and write it on white board.</p>
<p>We also had another chart with list of feeling adjectives. At the start of group, each girl would say how she felt that day. Any time someone had a new word, she could add it to the list.Ex: “despondent” rather than “sad”.</p>
<p>I’m not suggesting I was smarter than my clients, just older. I hope I reinforced the benefit of using a descriptive word.</p>
<p>Harvard does offer Math Ma-Mb, which is a calculus AB level course (first semester frosh calculus spread over a whole year), so it is not like everyone there has already taken calculus.</p>
<p>See, this is where I wonder whether I can communicate at all, because I thought I said, not that it was hard to keep my fabulously arcane intellectual ideas to myself, but that I liked not having to think about how I express myself, not editing my speech. Maybe I’m overly sensitive about it, given my early experiences, but people do ask me what words mean, and that’s fine if they’re okay with it, but sometimes they seem intimidated, and I don’t want people to be intimidated when they speak to me. Nor do I want them to think I do it on purpose, to put on airs or prove how smart I am. I’m a very verbal person, words matter to me, but I’m not this pompous person poetgrl seems determined to make me out as. I’m just very conscious of how people react. For some people, my education is a barrier; they are sensitive about their own lack of degrees, and I don’t want to make it worse by emphasizing the difference they perceive by using words they don’t know. One of my daughter’s best friends’ mother never finished college, and we have a great time together, but she seems always to make some self-deprecating comment about her lack of education; the last thing in the world I want to do is make her more conscious than she already is. It matters to her, not me, and that’s why I think before I speak.</p>
Most of my job is writing things for the public, and testifying as an expert witness in technical proceedings. I happen to believe most people can understand a lot. </p>