What is Linguistic Intelligence

Linguistic intelligence, one of Howard Gardners eight multiple intelligences, involves the ability to understand and use spoken and written language.  This can include expressing yourself effectively through speech or the written word as well as showing a facility for learning foreign tongues.  Writers, poets, lawyers, and speakers are among those that Gardner sees as having high linguistic intelligence. T.S. Eliot Gardner, a professor in the Harvard University Education Department, uses T.S. Eliot as an example of someone with high linguistic intelligence. At the age of ten, T.S. Eliot created a magazine called Fireside, of which he was the sole contributor, Gardner writes in his 2006 book,  Multiple  Intelligences: New Horizons in Theory and Practice. In a three-day period during his winter vacation, he created eight complete issues. Each one included poems, adventure stories, a gossip column, and humor. Much More Than What Can Be Measured on a Test Its interesting that Gardner listed linguistic intelligence as the very first intelligence in his original book on the subject, Frames of Mind: The Theory of MultipleIntelligences, published in 1983. This is one of the two intelligences -- the other being  logical-mathematical intelligence  -- that most closely resemble the skills measured by standard IQ tests. But Gardner argues that linguistic intelligence is much more than what can be measured on a test. Famous People With High Linguistic Intelligence William Shakespeare: Arguably historys greatest playwright, Shakespeare wrote plays that have enthralled audiences for more than four centuries. He coined or popularized many of the words and phrases we still use today.  Robert Frost: A poet laureate  of Vermont, Frost  read his well-known poem The Gift Outright at the inauguration of  President John F. Kennedy  on Jan. 20, 1961, according to Wikipedia. Frost wrote classic poems, such as The Road Not Taken, which are still widely read and admired today.J.K. Rowling:  This contemporary English author used the power of language and imagination to create a mythical, magical world of Harry Potter, which has captivated millions of readers and moviegoers over the years. Ways to Enhance and Encourage It Teachers can help their students enhance and strengthen their linguistic intelligence by: writing in a journalwriting a group storylearning a few new words each weekcreating a magazine or website devoted to something that interests themwriting letters to family, friends or penpalsplaying word games like crosswords or parts-of-speech bingoreading books, magazines, newspapers and even jokes Gardner gives some advice in this area. He talks, in Frames of Mind, about  Jean-Paul Sartre, a famous French philosopher, and novelist who was extremely precocious as a young child but so skilled at mimicking adults, including their style and register of talk, that by age five he could enchant audiences with his linguistic fluency. By age 9, Sartre was writing and expressing himself -- developing his linguistic intelligence. In the same way, as a teacher, you can enhance your students linguistic intelligence by giving them opportunities to express themselves creatively both verbally and through the written word.