When I was a kid my family would often chide me for using "big words" and told I was trying to "impress everyone" doing that.
The truth is, I was just trying to relate something I'd learned and thought was interesting and every time that happened I was kind of shocked and left wondering how they'd missed the gist of what I was talking about. My own mother did it. I finally stopped sharing things I thought they'd attack me for like that.
Then, in the 4th grade the city I went to school in had all the kids in the district take a test to measure intelligence, though they didn't tell us students that was what we were doing. About a month later my teacher asked my mother to meet her. She told my mom that I'd tested the 2nd highest in the district. She recommended that I be bumped up a couple grades so I could learn more. My mother told her "No. He'll be in the same grade as his older brother and that will cause problems at home." She also told the teacher that she didn't believe I was "that smart".
My teacher was shocked by that. She pulled me aside the next day and told me about the test, her conversation with my mother, and that she was sorry that she couldn't do more for me.
I'd never given a thought about me being "smarter" than anyone. I knew that school was easy for me as compared to some of the other kids that seemed to struggle but I figured they'd get the lessons soon enough. I never talked to anyone in my family about it. I knew they'd just humiliate me if I did.
A few years later I looked into IQ tests and saw the Bell Curve Graph and where I stood on it. Since then I've almost never, ever, mentioned it to anyone but a very few close friends who are no doubt in the same general area on that graph because the first few times I did I got hammered on hard.
Just a few years ago (50 years later) one of my cousins came to visit where I live now and I started talking about something I'd just read and they stopped me right in the middle of it and said "Why are you always trying to impress everyone by using big words." Brought me right back to when we were kids.
I've always known I couldn't be alone with these kinds of experiences, and this article confirms that, but it got me to thinking about how little this has has been discussed and how this kind of exposes that it's probably a far more pervasive problem than we know.
I do know that over the years I've pointed out why something wouldn't work as planned and been told I was wrong and then later proved right. More than a few times it was an expensive lesson to be learned for those who ignored me. And pretty much every time I was hated for pointing it out.
I've never given any thought to the problem or how to fix it but it would probably be interesting to attempt to measure the costs and ponder solutions to it.
As the article points out, relatability is the key to bridging the gaps of knowledge and understanding between people. I think, at least in the USA, there is cultural pressure against "talking down to" others, at it indicates either that the speaker is an outsider or is attempting to set themselves apart intellectually from their peers.
> "I do know that over the years I've pointed out why something wouldn't work as planned and been told I was wrong and then later proved right. More than a few times it was an expensive lesson to be learned for those who ignored me. And pretty much every time I was hated for pointing it out."
The phrase "nobody knew" comes to mind, especially when used by person of authority to indicate why no preemptive action was taken before some accident/crime/disaster occurred. I mentally substitute one of the following phrases:
"significant barriers prevented the communication of obvious warning signs"
"fear of inconvenience and embarrassment prevented further consideration of the possibility"
"authorities were not able to be convinced in time"
> I think, at least in the USA, there is cultural pressure against "talking down to" others, a[s] it indicates either that the speaker is an outsider or is attempting to set themselves apart intellectually from their peers.
Not living in the US: Where is the cultural problem in setting oneself apart intellectually from the peers?
> "Why are you always trying to impress everyone by using big words."
Yeah, I had similar experiences. I read a lot of books and absorbed their vocabulary, and sometimes it would slip out. I would just say what's on my mind, and that's what other people do, right?
Then I would get into trouble also by pausing to weigh my words, people read too much into your pause before answering them.
Or I just wouldn't say much, because it leads to trouble. Then people decide you are stuck up and aloof.
It took years to present a more normal facade. Plus just moving on to people that weren't so judgmental.
And anyway, over time I have come to prize simple speech, simple explanations. Especially if the concepts are complicated and heavy.
Whenever I paused to consider my next words, someone would start talking into my silence and then accuse me of interrupting them when I tried to continue.
I eventually realized that I wasn't bad at speaking; I just had a different style. Some people are more agile in conversation, because they do not think about what they want to say before activating their mouth-parts to make the noises. They jump right in, by using formulaic nulls to establish conversational priority, then fill in the content afterward. Then they hold priority with more nulls for as long as it takes to come up with more content.
I have never been able to bring myself to hold conversational priority by babbling nonsense, and I can't abide listening to a constant stream of nulls, trying to sift signal from noise, so I just don't talk to certain people. The best I can manage is gestural nulls.
It's one of the reasons why I prefer writing to speaking. I suspect I might be able to speak normally with Scandinavians, as I have heard they consider silences to be an essential part of conversation. Here in the US, I am continually frustrated by not being able to speak in paragraphs.
And that may be because most people do not think in paragraphs. A lot of them can't even manage whole sentences.
It may help to understand that conversations for most people, about most things, are a way to express and exchange emotions, not information.
There's information in there, but that's purely optional.
You have built-up resentment towards others because you'd like to relate to them, but it hasn't worked out so far. That's not because they 'can't even manage whole sentences' - it's because you're weird :) That's not a bad thing, or a good thing, it's just the way it is.
You can continue existing in your bubble of negativity and resentment, or work towards finding ways to enjoy people's company, because frankly, if you didn't want it, you'd not feel any resentment in the first place. You'd happily sit alone in a room and do whatever 'smart' things that you do, and that wouldn't include posting on here.
Everything you said is true, but none of it is very helpful to me.
> ENJOY VOGON POETRY
You grit your teeth, stiffen your upper lip, and discover that it's actually not all that bad. With a bit of drum machine, electric guitar, and some backup dancers, it might even pass as catchy pop song lyrics. Ford gapes at you in bewildered agony as Jeltz continues the reading.
I can't exactly blame myself for being weird. Which leaves me to blame everything-not-myself for being insufficiently respectful of weirdness in others.
>Whenever I paused to consider my next words, someone would start talking into my silence and then accuse me of interrupting them when I tried to continue.
I've made the same experiece, but then some introspection lead me to find that I do the same thing. Sometimes what somebody tells you is just so boring. There's no point to their story, no suspense, no drame, no humor. Then your thoughts trail off, boom, you get something interesting in your head. They make a lengthy pause, and you think "finally it's over", and then you interrupt them. They're like "I need to finish my story", they interrupt you back.
What I've learned, but still not completely internalized, is that you sometimes need to let go of your story. Your story isn't as interesting as you thought it would be. Maybe you're presenting it to the wrong audience. Whatever it is you need to let go of that story and continue with that conversation, instead of dwelling on the thought of getting your point across. Nobody cares.
I already know that nobody cares what I have to say. I still want to say it.
In theory, my thoughts are just as worthy and as interesting as my conversational partner, so I need to at least pretend to pay attention when they speak if I want them to pretend to be interested in my words. If their story is painfully boring, you power through it and use that experience to make your own story less pointless and meandering.
I don't really want to know about how D is dating M with the fuzzy caterpillar eyebrows and the Stephen King teeth, and how V refuses to be in another one of D's weddings, and can't D just collinearize anatidi without continually leaning on someone that clearly isn't quite that interested, but there it is. Now I get to talk about that thing that happened today that was funny at the time, but is only slightly amusing in retrospect.
Some people don't ever stop to hear you, much less listen. There's no point in saying anything to them. You might as well draw a stick figure in chalk on a brick wall and talk to it--or write it up and post it to an Internet forum where nobody really knows or cares who you are. ...Twitter, obviously.
It's not just here in the US, I've had similar culture shock moving from Minneapolis to San Francisco. I've had endless pain at work trying to communicate an idea quickly enough and not being able to have conversations that feel genuine/curious/reciprocal (more defensive). I'm still not sure if it was because I'd earned my respect there so people paid close attention vs. n00b here, or that the culture was genuinely different. I have friends from there/that time here now, we have good discussions still.
I'm almost certain people exist with a real aptitude for say, high level mathematics, and no aptitude at all for communicating with others. I may have even met one or two...
I rarely use big words when there's a simpler one that has almost the exact same meaning.
Sometimes I'm communicating something quite precise and nuanced.
In those cases I may use big words because it is the right word to use.
English is my 2nd language as well, so if nothing else I think I would deserve some credit for having developed a good vocabulary.
It annoys me when people dismiss the precision in the language as "big words" or "trying to impress". It shows that they are not listening carefully enough, or that they have such a weak vocabulary that they are just overwhelmed by a few words they are not familiar with.
Context is also important. I rarely do that with basic day to day conversations. But hey if you throw some big complex question at me about a professional topic in a professional environment then don't expect a 1st-grader-friendly response.
Lots of more precise words are not particularly 'big' words. One shouldn't have to pre-edit one's thoughts to pull out the better word because it doesn't fit into a typical 5th grade education.
I love older British children's literature because it doesn't do this at all- it expects the kids to learn new vocabulary along the way. Check out 'Peter Pan'- the verbiage is no different than if it was targeted to an older audience and the better for it.
>I rarely use big words when there's a simpler one that has almost the exact same meaning.
Yes, but the simpler one isn't necessarily the one that pops up into your head. Always opting for the simpler word means a less natural dialog flow for some.
Thank you for sharing this story. My son was tested with an IQ of 160. This puts him in the top 99.98%+ in terms of population. I do NOT want what you went through to be what he goes through. But it's hard because no one caters as much for high IQ as they do for lower IQ, it's a form of learning disability relative to his peers. He is 1-2 standard deviations away from "gifted" children, who score at 130. It's hard finding schools flexible enough to cater to his educational needs but homeschooling him robs him over the social aspect of school, and a "regular" childhood.
I don't know my exact position on the curve, but I can relate.
I find it ironic that many of the folks who score pretty high on general intelligence, often have an issue with social intelligence. I spend a lot of time now trying to study human nature in a game of catch-up. What most people seem to learn instinctively, I need to study.
> What most people seem to learn instinctively, I need to study.
This is 100% my wife vs me. I had heard about EQ before I met her, but I never really witnessed the power of a high EQ in action until we started dating. She knew so much about me by reading my face, reactions, gestures, etc. it sometimes made me angry, like she was in my head or something. I watched as she predicted people's actions easily, or convinced people to do what she wanted just by talking to them a particular way. She really opened my eyes to the idea that maybe having a high EQ is more beneficial than a high IQ, at least in navigating life. I always considered it something people said they had because they knew they weren't smart (side note, my wife also has a high IQ, so if you're reading this honey, yes I know you're smarter than me too.)
What's the irony, really... there's probably a reason innate IQ settled around where it did over the thousands of years since civilization started and not higher.
One of the better study guides I found was Charlie Munger's book : "Poor Charlies Almanac" One of the things i also found very enlightening was that people often believe people who talk very fast, even after they have been wrong quite a bit.
It may not necessarily be an innate issue with their social intelligence, but more so a learned reaction. Getting singled out by something as important as speech as a child could have lasting ramifications. Having to constantly weigh your words in stressful social situations sounds like a surefire way to develop social anxiety.
What (most) people don't understand is that these kids are not trying to impress! It comes naturally to them and telling them that just contributes to isolate them even more. Being an outlier is already a lonely place.
In the end you can only communicate with people at the same intelligence level (or whatever you want to call it) as you.
Much of what you've written here has also been the story of my life. My natural way of speaking is to choose precise words from a big vocabulary. I've been chided about this on several occasions. I definitely get a much better response when I use small words and simple, common analogies. That's easy enough to do in writing, but doing it live is very hard. I have to slow my thinking down and pause to come up with simple phrasing. Of course, other people perceive big words as trying too hard, and small words as natural.
As for the rest: yeah I don't get no respect neither.
However, the main purposes of communication are to connect with the listeners and to convey information to them.
Speaking in a way that is hard for them to understand makes the communication less effective at both of those things.
The best communicators make a deliberate effort to connect with the other participants and adjust the message such that it makes as much sense as possible to them. This can take a lot of practice and empathy to do well.
Thanks for sharing. I quickly learned peers found "big words" alienating. Like you, I process what I learn through conversation. I've found the best way to do it is reach out to an expert in the field or an academic. They are often quite happy to help someone learn about a topic that is important to them.
I've encountered similar from people, though I don't recall getting hostility from my immediate family as a child. Rather, I was praised for being smart. Though it's not like that didn't lead to problems of its own.
> "Why are you always trying to impress everyone by using big words."
The thing is, sometimes I am trying to impress for one reason or another, good or bad. Other times, I'm trying to communicate with precision because I think there are nuances to hand which are important to be aware of. In the later case, it can be especially frustrating. After the first set big words is not understood, my default reaction is to try to speak with even more precision. Thus come bigger words, thus less understanding, and so the feedback loop goes.
Which leads me to my next point. Communication and understanding are key. It is goddamned alienating when communication and understanding break down consistently. And they easily do when there's a gap in relative intelligence between people. I suspect this is at least partially the cause for the results in the article. I've found it easier to relate to people who seem to be of similar intelligence. People whom are significantly more or less so are harder to communicate with. If it's hard to understand what one's leader is doing or why, is one going to trust him much? Or is one more likely to feel suspicious or resentful?
I went through a phase of using "big words". At some level it was almost definitely an attempt at showing off. Maybe you genuinely weren't, but I definitely was, and I sense it strongly in others.
These days I almost always focus on being understandable.
I think it's a valuable skill to give a broad overview about a topic in a field they know nothing about, in language they will understand. Though I'm not good enough to convincingly explain "technical debt" to high level management yet!
If you were shown to be intelligent enough to be bumped up a couple of grades, you were also intelligent enough to choose the most appropriate language for your audience. If people furrowed their brow at "nodes", "miners" and "Byzantine fault tolerance", degrade gracefully to the a simple story of the "Two Generals Problem."
That pattern doesn't work for everything, but it certainly works for anything you would have been talking about in the 4th grade.
Intelligent kids tend to not be observant with respect to other people's reactions. This is why nerds and geeks were social outcasts (until the terms got rebranded). This lack of awareness doesn't mean they aren't intelligent, it means they're kids. Gaining the kind of emotional/social intelligence ot not geek out like that, or to learn to change your language, requires socialization and experience.
All kids tend not to be observant wrt other people's reactions. The ability to communicate with a broad audience at a young age is itself a sign of intelligence.
My point is that OP was treating the "big words" dismissal merely as a signifier of intelligence. It's also a signifier that one lacks the ability to communicate clearly with others. That's hardly a revelation wrt 4th graders, but it's worthy of reflection at whatever age the OP happens to be now. I know plenty of people who enjoy wearing that inability as a fashion just as people now buy designer "nerd glasses."
I had a similar 'problem' but I really don't think I am very smart. In 4th grade I was reading at the top level of the 6th graders. Other kids would call me bookworm, 'walking dictionary' and told me to 'be human!'
I did it less but certainly kept using richer words with the friends that I knew would understand.
Just recently I sent mail to a work colleague with the content
For your edification.
He was amused when he looked up the meaning of edification :-)
I was chided at work recently for using a big word on a comment against a bug report that described a dialog admonishing the user to take some external action.
I had the same issue, and essentially developed a lingo to speak to those kinds of people. More contractions, dropped g’s, “fucking” used as an adjective. It’s been a couple of decades, and every time I switch to that, I feel like an utter fraud, but sadly it works. I can’t imagine what I’d do if that hadn’t been an option though.
Edit: Support group at my place everyone, coffee and donuts will be provided. ;)
I remember once in high school in a kind of AV class I walked past a video camera that was hooked up to a monitor with a live feed. What happened was that as I was walking across the room, I saw out of the corner of my eye a very nerdy person walking across the room on the monitor, and then I suddenly realized that it was me! I walked nerdy! After that, I actually studied the other kids to see what they were doing different, and I adopted two specific changes: 1. Walk with a strut. To me this felt exaggerated and ridiculous until I got used to it, but it was just what the other [male] students did. 2. Hold my books in my hand loosely, as though they might fall out at any time but I don't notice or care. Those two deliberate self-conscious behavioral changes led to a night-and-day difference in how other kids related to me. I was still a nerd, I didn't become popular overnight or anything, but it made a huge difference. (I went to a big public school where you didn't know everybody. FWIW.)
"Act like a dumb-ass and they'll treat you like an equal."
Yess. There is more than one language you have to learn as a smart kid. One is for smart adults, other is for average or worse adults (I'm sad that OP immediate family was part of that group) yet another is for other kids. Same as second one plus ton of swearwords.
A friend from college told me about a buddy of his who took a summer job working at a naval shipyard, assisting mechanics. Those salty old sailors used "fuck" quite liberally. Any noun had a good chance of having a "fucking" in front of it.
The pinnacle occurred one day when they opened up an engine that wasn't working, and saw that it was totally beyond repair. The head mechanic turned to his crew and gave the verdict: "This fucking fucker's fucked".
There's two problems here. One is convincing people that you're smart and not just acting smart. The mistake is assuming that people can recognize directly that someone else is smarter than them. The more effective way to be recognized as smart is social proof.
The second problem is that being smart is a kind of social power (like being rich or beautiful) so there is an incentive not to recognize your intelligence if it's seen as a social threat. Showing someone that they're wrong usually results in a loss of social value for them. Something like sharing your IQ score can be seen as an unprovoked signal of social power.
If you want to leverage your intelligence politically then the most important thing is to signal your political allegiances first. Generally power is recognized when others realize that it's in their interest to do so.
One of the great unsung benefits of going to a regular public school is you learn how to deal with dumb people. And when you're out in the world, outside of the above-average bubbles a lot of us find ourselves in, there's a lot of dull-normal people out there.
It's totally overrated skill. After school you are never forced to stay where dumb people are. You can just move. Average people are easy enough to deal with even without suffering dumb people on daily basis for ten or so years while dealing with your own process of growing up.
Vocabulary is a strong signal of social status (higher education is strongly correlated to wealth or social rank). So care needs to be taken to avoid signalling you are "better than them" to others that rank you as an equal.
Do you get accused of being condescending?
Maybe find someone smart with good social skills whom you respect, and have them watch your interaction with others, and then have them give you honest feedback?
And it is superficially similar to the plot of the book Matilda by Roald Dahl, which makes me think that it is not a situation unique to grandparent poster.
We will probably never know the number of kids out there that never fulfill their intellectual potential because of envy, jealousy, spite, pettiness, avarice, bigotry, or other equally bad motives.
"Prevention of learning" just seems like one of those things that should be considered a crime, but is never punished with even so much as disapprobation.
Wow. I would never speak to my mom again after that. What she did is child abuse and I suspect this happens with regularity in a lot of cultures. I could forgive actual physical abuse but not this. I was the same way growing up except my parents were very supportive. While they robbed me of the fun of adolescence by being controlling, that is nothing compared to trying to rob one of learning.
my family would often chide me for using "big words"...
The truth is, I was just trying to relate something I'd learned...
That sounds terrible. You are not allowed to be yourself around your family. It must've been especially tough for a kid.
However, keep in mind that communication goes both ways. If the way you speak and carry yourself bothers your audience, then you should change the way you speak around them.
As an immigrant, I have thought about this a lot. Changing the way I speak isn't necessarily, as Holden Caulfield calls it, "being a phony". I can speak a completely different language in order to relate my thoughts to different peoples. It's not a stretch to choose different english words to help my partner understand me.
The truth is, I was just trying to relate something I'd learned and thought was interesting and every time that happened I was kind of shocked and left wondering how they'd missed the gist of what I was talking about. My own mother did it. I finally stopped sharing things I thought they'd attack me for like that.
Then, in the 4th grade the city I went to school in had all the kids in the district take a test to measure intelligence, though they didn't tell us students that was what we were doing. About a month later my teacher asked my mother to meet her. She told my mom that I'd tested the 2nd highest in the district. She recommended that I be bumped up a couple grades so I could learn more. My mother told her "No. He'll be in the same grade as his older brother and that will cause problems at home." She also told the teacher that she didn't believe I was "that smart".
My teacher was shocked by that. She pulled me aside the next day and told me about the test, her conversation with my mother, and that she was sorry that she couldn't do more for me.
I'd never given a thought about me being "smarter" than anyone. I knew that school was easy for me as compared to some of the other kids that seemed to struggle but I figured they'd get the lessons soon enough. I never talked to anyone in my family about it. I knew they'd just humiliate me if I did.
A few years later I looked into IQ tests and saw the Bell Curve Graph and where I stood on it. Since then I've almost never, ever, mentioned it to anyone but a very few close friends who are no doubt in the same general area on that graph because the first few times I did I got hammered on hard.
Just a few years ago (50 years later) one of my cousins came to visit where I live now and I started talking about something I'd just read and they stopped me right in the middle of it and said "Why are you always trying to impress everyone by using big words." Brought me right back to when we were kids.
I've always known I couldn't be alone with these kinds of experiences, and this article confirms that, but it got me to thinking about how little this has has been discussed and how this kind of exposes that it's probably a far more pervasive problem than we know.
I do know that over the years I've pointed out why something wouldn't work as planned and been told I was wrong and then later proved right. More than a few times it was an expensive lesson to be learned for those who ignored me. And pretty much every time I was hated for pointing it out.
I've never given any thought to the problem or how to fix it but it would probably be interesting to attempt to measure the costs and ponder solutions to it.