On Exploring Emotional Intelligence from a Linguistic Perspective

Exploring Emotional Intelligence from a Linguistic Perspective
— Read on www.academia.edu/53579692/Exploring_Emotional_Intelligence_from_a_Linguistic_Perspective

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I disagree with this author‘s particular use of supporting examples because they detract from his point about emotional intelligence, but as well, linguistics involvement with mental well being.

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What are we trying to accomplish?

This has to be the first question involved with any statement that’s supposed to say something factual. For, even the very idea of there being fundamental and basic facts is based in an assumption about what are we trying to do by referring to facts. This is not to say that there are not facts, or that everything’s relative, but more to suggest that in so much as I am referring to facts, I need to be clear about what I’m trying to accomplish.

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So let me be clear: facts exist truly. They don’t have anything to do with what meaning I’m making out of them (except the fact of meaning making) as though the fact that I might be making meaning dispels the potential for there to be facts. For, How could I be making meaning then? Since there would be no factual basis to say that I am merely making meaning.  The point is redundant, as I discuss elsewhere.

Semantics as a basis for discussion is overrated, ‘overmined’ as Graham Harman might say, and to call upon semantics as some sort of universal fact of being human in the world is really to call upon and assumed project about what human beings are supposed to be involved with; which is to say, if you are A human being then you are involved with the world.

I disagree with this giant assumption. And again, this is not to say that the world of human beings is made up with a bunch of random opinions based on personal experience and semantics. I am saying that that assumption is involved with a certain type of project, it assumes certain things, and it moves people toward a certain goal that is unspoken.

My work has to do with laying a foundation by which people will be able begin to speak about what is unspoken before they assume what is common.

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OK.

To the reposted essay.

I agree that the greater emotional intelligence a person has, the greater lexicon to describe emotion, the more access a person has to who and what they are. I’m not sure that really this short linked essay is really saying that though. It seems to be saying that if you are a human being then you should have a greater lexicon so you can achieve more in the world.

Think of all the assumptions that go into the difference that I point out there. Then when you read the essay, think of the huge weight of assumptions that are going into just the fact that he would write a paper in such a way.

For, while it may be a nice thing to be able to achieve, to be a high achiever, I severely doubt that more than 20% of people in the world ever become a high achiever no matter how much they will try, or even if they will want to. So, to talk about some sort of common human being that should have any emotional quotient of intelligence, and that achievement is the reason why someone should have a greater lexicon to expressed their emotions, kind of argues the point that you’re a really fucked up individual: it communicates to you implicitly that you are screwed up, in need of improvement due to your inherent ignorance and you need to do better, that you’re screwed up and you’re probably not a high achiever.

I’m not sure that being a high achiever really matters beyond the studies. But maybe that’s because I’m a high achiever. I don’t really know. I’m fairly sure that most people really couldn’t care less whether they are high achiever or not, and those who want to be a high achiever could probably care even less because they’re already on their way to achieving very well. Again: redundant (discussed elsewhere).

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Read on if you really want to know what I’m saying here, because, nevertheless, for sure there is a vast majority of people that reckon themselves to achievement; I’m not saying that they are incorrect, nor am I saying that people who speak to measurements of achievement are wrong.

I am merely pointing out facts about the situation, as an example of how we might be able to discern differences in projects that are otherwise assumed.

The Point of this Comment.

The reason for this really came out of the repost authors examples that he uses to support his short paper. I’m not sure that he needed to put those examples in there on one hand, but on the other hand that he felt that those examples supported his paper really says some thing about why I would not want to have any emotional intelligence at all, if we’re gonna be honest here. 🙂

Thus we get into the linguistic Symantec trope that pervades much of academic scientific promotion, at least in the area of psychology maybe.

He uses two examples. One is that a particular African culture cannot see blue simply because they don’t have the word for blue. The other example is that another culture has difficulty with discerning, for example, 13, since it lies somewhere in between 10 and 15 and they only have a lexicon that deals with fives, I guess.

I totally understand this idea. But I’m not sure it’s true. It draws upon facts, but then uses its own Symantec to make an argument within the idealism that everything is relative (semantically). And the proof he, they, usually give is that in the production of communication I would fail to communicate to someone else that I understood what blue was. And this goes to the traditional academic trope of the economy of language.

Follow me here; I am not saying that that particular way to organize knowledge is wrong or bad. I am saying that it is being unclear as to its motives, because the project it is involved with is “bettering humanity” and this is assumed as an ethical project mandate. I’m just really not sure what this humanity that is trying to get better really is. It’s not wrong that we’re trying to make a better humanity, but I suppose I am making the argument that it moves so fast into the future that we really don’t get very far at all because no one is really telling me what it’s about let alone what it really is.

Take the number 13 to someone who doesn’t have a lexicon which includes 11,12,13,14.

Does this mean that If I give a person 13 gold coins that they either believe that they have 10 or 15? I would say no. It doesn’t really matter what they can talk about, and the language that they are using is not really expressive of what they are thinking. Of course, we can’t know exactly what they are thinking because of the limitation of language, but that does not mean that if I give them 13 coins that they do not understand that they have 13 coins. We never know exactly what someone is thinking, it doesn’t matter whether or not we have the word for it, because this happens to everyone at all times, in so much as they are a subject (see my discussions elsewhere). 

The number 13 is a purely arbitrary definition about what is present. What actually occurs is more significant than whether or not 13 is being able to expressed.

Keep following me here…

This is why the elucidation of what project is being assumed is important.

Because this person in the essay of the re-post is really talking about mental health. However, they are doing it under a rubric that it must fit into all knowledge perfectly, as though there is this one common knowledge in which all humanity is involved entirely, and yet this assumption is being talked about as if everything is relative to the language we are able to use or have access to. ?? 

This is where his essay falls to the side so far as he might be talking about something specific.

The point that he is making about emotional intelligence, and its relation to linguistics and semantics, doesn’t have anything to do really with whether or not I can discern 13 or the color blue. This is just actually talking about mental health, if I’m actually talking about a person sense of self in the world. 

So it is that I made a super long comment, went on a kind of parabolic journey, to come back to the point that his two examples really detract from the point of his essay.

If I’m trying to help a person develop more comprehensive lexicon to express their emotions, I’m not doing it so they can show up in the world more consistently, so then they can achieve more. I’m doing it so they have a better sense of self, so the issues that they struggle with may become more clear to them. This doesn’t have anything to do with Whether they understand what “consternation” is. Because for sure, as opposed to what the author suggests, at times they might be feeling consternation, but it is that they were unable to express themselves and know them selves that specifically, and so they use the next best meaning, they use the next best way to describe themselves and to therefore act.

It is not that consternation does not exist, but that instead they behave, say, with anger, or they get mad at themselves, or they think less of themselves, or they act out, among any number a things.

For sure, consternation exists. It is the discrepancy between their understanding and actuality which is manifesting the difficulty. It is not mere lexicon and semantic; if it were then there would be no issue. The person simply wouldn’t understand what blue was, and would go about their way perfectly fine. It wouldn’t matter to her what blue was because anyone referring to blue would be simply set aside and described in some other way.

Hence It is due to the discrepancy, it is due to an assumption about what is proper to the universe that is at root of the problem itself.  

The greater point is that there is no viable common project. If we are speaking of emotional intelligence in the context of mental health, then certain supportive examples fail that project, and to use them thus shows a failure of the effort itself. We need a manner to be able to discern these invisible ruptures of epistemological continuum.

So it is that we need a manner by which to be explicit — in the same way as a deficit emotional lexicon yields aggrevation of problem — about what we are up to.