What Is Linguistic Intelligence? 4 Practical Ways to Improve It

When people talk about linguistic intelligence, they’re usually referring to Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences.

But people have been thinking about the relationship between language, learning and intelligence for a very long time.

Confucius, for example, opens The Analects by asking whether it isn’t a pleasure to learn something and practice what you’ve learned.

I think there’s a lot of wisdom packed into that idea.

• Learn something.
• Return to it.
• Practice using it.

Those steps matter enormously, especially when the target information you’re learning involves words.

Gardner defined linguistic intelligence as:

“Sensitivity to the spoken and written word and the ability to master languages and the capacity to use language to accomplish certain goals.”

It’s a useful definition.

But there’s an important qualification before we go any further.

Gardner’s broader theory of multiple intelligences has been enormously influential in education, but it is not universally accepted as a scientific model of separate forms of intelligence.

Researchers have questioned whether the proposed intelligences function independently and whether they can be measured in the way the theory suggests. You can read one detailed discussion of those criticisms in Frontiers in Psychology.

Fortunately, we don’t have to settle that debate to get something useful from Gardner’s idea.

We can look at the specific language skills he described and ask a much more practical question:

How can you get better at remembering and using words?

That’s where linguistic intelligence becomes particularly interesting from the perspective of memory.

What Is Linguistic Intelligence?

Within Gardner’s framework, linguistic intelligence refers to abilities involving spoken and written language.

It overlaps with things psychologists might describe in terms of verbal ability, language proficiency and verbal comprehension.

But these aren’t necessarily identical concepts.

And linguistic intelligence should not simply be treated as a subset of verbal intelligence.

For our purposes, there’s another ability that matters a great deal:

Verbal memory.

After all, being good with language involves remembering quite a lot of linguistic information.

Depending on what you’re doing, you may need to remember:

• Words and their meanings
• Names
• Foreign-language vocabulary
• Pronunciations
• Phrases and expressions
• Definitions
• Quotations
• What you want to say during a presentation

That’s why memory becomes so useful when you want to:

• Speak more precisely
• Understand spoken language
• Learn a new language
• Remember more vocabulary
• Retain terminology related to your field
• Recall quotations and passages
• Memorize and deliver presentations

Memory techniques don’t magically create a separate form of intelligence.

What they can do is give you practical ways to encode and retrieve the linguistic information you want to use.

And that distinction is important.

Competence, Performance And Why Using Language Matters

Noam Chomsky famously distinguished between linguistic “competence” and “performance.”

The distinction is more technical than simply knowing grammar versus using it correctly.

In Chomsky’s framework, linguistic competence concerns the underlying knowledge that makes understanding and producing language possible.

Performance is what happens when you actually use language.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy discusses Chomsky’s distinction in more detail.

One important implication is that knowing a language is different from knowing how to describe its grammar.

You can speak English perfectly well without being able to explain what a subordinate clause is.

Likewise, knowing the formal rules of a language doesn’t necessarily mean those words will come easily when you’re trying to have a conversation.

I’ve seen this distinction play out many times in the polyglot community.

Language learners can spend enormous amounts of time analyzing a language.

But eventually you have to use it.

That means reading it.

Listening to it.

Writing it.

Speaking it.

And, critically, remembering enough of it that the words are available when you need them.

This is where deliberate practice and memory techniques can complement the study of grammar.

Grammar still matters.

But you don’t necessarily need to wait until you have consciously mastered every rule before starting to use the language.

I’ve discussed this issue in detail in my tutorial on memorizing grammar rules.

Are Language Abilities Fixed?

This is where discussions of linguistic intelligence can become unnecessarily confusing.

Chomsky’s work is strongly associated with the idea that aspects of the human capacity for language involve innate constraints.

But debates about exactly what is innate, what is learned and how language acquisition takes place remain active.

And Chomsky’s theories about language acquisition do not prove that Gardner’s linguistic intelligence is an inborn and separate form of intelligence.

For practical purposes, we don’t need to solve the nature-versus-nurture debate anyway.

Specific skills involving language can clearly be practiced by:

• Expanding your vocabulary.
• Learning another language.
• Practicing recalling names and terminology.
• Giving presentations.
• And you can improve your ability to remember the words and phrases you’ve deliberately studied.

4 Ways To Develop The Language Skills Gardner Described

There’s no special order to these activities.

I use all of them in different ways.

What matters most is that you don’t just think about being “linguistically intelligent.”

Give yourself specific things to learn, remember and use.

One: Mind Mapping

Tony Buzan spent years popularizing mind mapping as a way to organize ideas visually.

I’ve found mind mapping useful for language too.

I personally use mind mapping a lot when planning YouTube videos, presentations and blog posts like the one you’re reading now.

Instead of writing everything out in advance, I can reduce an idea to a few keywords.

Those keywords give me cues.

Then I reconstruct the fuller idea while speaking or writing.

This is useful because language doesn’t exist only as finished sentences.

Often, what you need is a small retrieval cue that helps you remember a much larger body of information.

That’s one reason mind mapping combines well with the memory techniques I teach.

I don’t consider mind mapping a substitute for memorization.

I use it as a way to organize information before deciding what actually needs to go into memory.

Two: Learn Languages

Gardner specifically included the mastery of languages in his description of linguistic intelligence.

And if you want to exercise your memory for language, learning another language gives you no shortage of material.

You have:

• Vocabulary
• Pronunciation
• Grammar
• Idioms
• Common phrases
• Entire passages you may want to recite

Personally, I continue learning Chinese in small doses while studying Latin and Greek and maintaining my German.

I also take on what I call “memory missions.”

For example, I’ve worked on memorizing scripture in source languages.

Projects like these force me to do more than recognize words on a page.

I need to encode them.

Retrieve them.

Check my accuracy.

And return to them later.

Here’s a case study showing how I did this with the Book of John in Latin:

Watch my Latin memorization case study

You don’t have to memorize scripture, of course.

The same process can be used for vocabulary, useful phrases, poetry, quotations or passages that matter to you.

Three: Read For Vocabulary And Understanding

Reading exposes you to vocabulary in context.

And context matters because knowing a word involves more than recognizing its dictionary definition.

You want to see how people actually use it.

One approach I’ve found useful is to spend an extended period reading around a single subject.

As you continue encountering the same terminology, names and concepts, the material starts connecting together.

When I come across a word or turn of phrase I want available for active use, I don’t just hope that repeated exposure will make it stick.

I make a note of it.

Then, if it’s important enough, I deliberately memorize it.

If you want to do the same, my tutorial on how to memorize vocabulary will show you the process.

The goal isn’t merely collecting more words.

It’s understanding them well enough that you can retrieve and use them.

That makes vocabulary practice an excellent companion to deliberate work on reading comprehension.

Four: Exercise Your Memory

This is the part that matters most for my own work.

I’ve spent years studying and practicing ancient memory techniques, learning from contemporary memory athletes and combining mnemonic practice with evidence-based learning principles such as active recall.

There are many approaches you can explore.

My complete guide to memory techniques will introduce you to many of the most useful ones.

My favorite is the Memory Palace technique.

I’ve used Memory Palaces for foreign-language vocabulary, speeches, names, philosophical material and longer passages.

The basic principle is straightforward.

You associate information with locations you already know.

Then you mentally revisit those locations and practice retrieving what you’ve encoded.

For linguistic material, I suggest going one step further.

Don’t stop when you can remember the word.

Use it.

For example:

1. Choose the word, phrase or passage you want to remember.
2. Create a memorable association for it.
3. Place that association in a Memory Palace.
4. Practice recalling it without looking at the answer.
5. Check yourself and correct mistakes.
6. Use what you’ve memorized through reading, writing, speaking or listening.
7. Return to it later and retrieve it again.

That last part is critical.

There’s an enormous difference between recognizing a word when you see it and being able to produce it when you need it.

Retrieval practice helps close that gap.

And combining mnemonic encoding with retrieval gives you a practical way to train the kinds of language skills Gardner was talking about without needing to make grand claims about “boosting intelligence.”

If you’d like to learn the process I use for creating Memory Palaces and memorable associations, grab my free course:

It will give you a practical foundation in the memory techniques you can use for vocabulary, languages, names, presentations and much more.

Use Linguistic Intelligence As A Practical Framework

You don’t have to decide that linguistic intelligence is a separate biological intelligence in order to find Gardner’s idea useful.

You can treat it as a description of something more practical:

Your ability to understand, remember and use language effectively.

And if remembering words is part of the challenge, don’t leave that part to chance. Instead:

• Choose something worth remembering.
• Encode it deliberately.
• Retrieve it without looking.
• Correct your mistakes.
• Then use what you’ve remembered in the real world.

That’s the approach I’ve used throughout my own language learning, memorization projects and public speaking.

And unlike trying to decide whether you were born with a particular kind of intelligence, it’s something you can actually practice today.