Text for pragmatic analysis. At the top of the list is the notion that intelligence is measured by your ability to solve complex problems; to read

At the top of the list is the notion that intelligence is measured by your ability to solve complex problems; to read, write and communicate at certain levels; and to resolve abstract equations quickly. This vision of intelligence predicates formal education and bookish excellence as the true measures of self-fulfillment. It encourages a land of intellectual snobbery that has brought with it some demoralizing results. We have come to believe that someone who has more edu­cational merit badges, who is a whiz at some form of scholastic discipline (math, science, a huge vocabulary, a memory for superfluous facts, a fast reader) is in­telligent.Yet mental hospitals are clogged with patients who have all of the properly lettered credentials— as well as many who don't. A truer barometer of intel­ligence is an effective, happy life lived each day at each present moment of every day.

You are happy, if you live each moment for every­thing it's worth, then you are an intelligent person. Problem solving is a useful adjunct to your happiness, but if you know what has given you inability to resolve a particular concern, you can still choose happiness for yourself, or at least refuse to choose unhappiness. Then you are intelligent. You are intelligent be­cause you have the ultimate weapon against the big N.B.D. - Nervous Break Down.

Perhaps you will be surprised to learn that there is no such thing as a nervous breakdown. Nerves don't break down. Cut someone open and look for the broken nerves. They never show up. Intelligent peo­ple do not have N.B.D.'s because they are in charge of themselves. They know how to choose happiness over depression, because they know how to deal with the problems of their lives. Notice I didn't say solve the problems. Rather than measuring their intelligence on their ability to solve the problem, they measure it on their capacity for maintaining themselves as happy and worthy, whether the problem gets solved or not

You can begin to think of yourself as truly intelli­gent on the basis of how you choose to feel in the face of trying circumstances. The life struggles are pretty much the same for each of us. Everyone who is in­volved with other human beings in any social context has similar difficulties. Disagreements, conflicts and compromises are a part of what it means to be human. Similarly, money, growing old, sickness, deaths, natural disasters and accidents are all events which present problems to virtually all human beings. But some peo­ple are able to make it, to avoid immobilizing dejection and unhappiness despite such occurrences, while others collapse, become inert or have an N.B.D. Those who recognize problems as a human condition and don't measure happiness by an absence of problems are the most intelligent kind of humans we know; also, the most rare.

Expressing feelings

On the whole, people try not to show their emotions in public as well as in private conversations. Being reserved is a good quality. But sometimes the speaker can’t help showing how greatly he is surprised at something that doesn’t come up to his expectations. The ‘high’ (or ‘low’) key signifies this. ‘High’ key marks the first prominent syllable and is an upward step in pronunciation, low key is a downward step. Cf.:

(a) We need to reDUCE

(b)... other SCARCE, + often irrePLAceable + natural reSOURces

(c) MARket street, + the street she was LOOking for …+ …

(d) Our NEXT meeting, + the MARCH meeting, + is …

The pragmatic function of ‘high’ key is to introduce wrong expectations, whereas ‘low’ key is used when the speaker thinks that what he is saying is exactly the case one might expect. Both ‘high’ and ‘low’ keys may be used with tonic and non-tonic stresses. Cf.:

(e) Traffic conGEStion + is just as serious, OUT of town + as in the

COUNtry.

(f) I don’t THINK so; he had been a KEEN driver, himSELF.

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