Emotion and Language

To me, the only writing that is worth reading is full of emotion. Why would anyone want to waste their time reading something that even the author doesn’t care about? They probably wouldn’t. Emotion is vital to writing and it is the writing that can extract emotion from the reader that is the most successful and memorable.

I enjoy reading books for fun in my spare time, although schoolwork doesn’t allow me much spare time. Because of this time constraint, the business-side of me is extremely cutthroat when it comes to selecting which books deserve a part of my limited attention. If a book doesn’t capture my attention (which is usually correlated to how much emotion the author puts into their writing) within the first 50 pages, it’s toast, done, finito. I just don’t have the time or patience to endure a piece of writing that doesn’t give me a reason to care about it.

This would apply to school reading as well, except for the fact that I don’t have the luxury of putting down an extremely dull textbook, no matter how much I may want to. One thing I’ve come to find though, is that the textbooks that you don’t want to set aside, the ones that are full of emotion and that create some sort of reaction in you, are likely to make you stick with the subject (even if you wouldn’t have otherwise). So for all you academic departments out there who don’t have many followers, maybe you should start picking more passionate textbooks to give to your students.

The amount of emotion in books also determines how memorable they are to the reader. The only books I remember later in any detail (whether for academic requirements or for amusement) are the ones that had a strong pathetic appeal and elicited an emotional response from me. One of my favorite books of all time (that I read when I was 15) is Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale because of its passionate discussion of women’s issues, which challenged me to always question “the system” and changed the way I perceive many different things in life. It is because of this passion that I remember it with so much detail today.

This also applies to speeches, except that for speeches it is not only important that their words are emotional, but that their presentation is emotional as well. A monotone and un-enthused presentation will negate ANY emotion that may exist in the actual wording of the speech. In some ways, it can be easier to create an emotional response (whether in agreement or disagreement) from the audience in a speech, especially when there is an emotional presentation.

I experienced a situation like this just the other day. I walked by a man standing on a rock, yelling at the top of his lungs about God and how we can “all be saved” if only we join with him. I personally hated the speech and rolled my eyes as I walked by, getting a little frustrated that crazies are allowed to disrupt the peace and quiet with their rants on rocks in the middle of campus, but… I did notice him. He may not have changed my mind about anything, but his words and very emotional presentation stirred something inside me. So I give him credit for putting together such a “pathetic” discourse (pun intended).

It is also interesting to note that different audiences need different methods of presentation to elicit an emotional response from them. Take President Obama’s “Yes, we can” speech for example. That is a great speech just dripping with emotion, and with literary and rhetorical techniques galore. Its message (whether they agreed with it or not) reached many people who listened to him speak both on television at in person. His speech however, did not reach many younger generation Americans in the form in which it was presented. Interestingly, when the musician, Will.i.am put the same words to music and created a music video out of Obama’s “Yes, we can” speech, this same speech appealed to millions of people in this younger generation. Its YouTube video has been viewed 20,219,178 times since its post date two years ago. All it took was a different form of presentation.

Cognitive Fluency as Discussed in "Easy = True"

After reading the Boston Globe’s piece titled “Easy = True” by Drake Bennett, I was surprised at how frequently the argument that logos, slogans, and designs which are easy to decipher and comprehend tend to do better is demonstrated to be true. Companies employing those devices seem to generally be the ones that are most successful and most prolific (although there are a few notable exceptions). The idea of the success of things with “cognitive fluency” is very much straightforward and intuitive because we can all relate to the processes involved. It is also a very useful concept because it can be accurately tested and refined by looking at real-world cases and even by conducting limited experiments.

Perhaps one of the best examples of a successful company with an emblem that fits into the category of being cognitively fluent is Nike. The name, the logo, and the associated phrase (Nike, the swoosh symbol and “just do it,” respectively) are simple, easy to understand, and even easy to duplicate (indeed, there are few other companies with simpler associated trademarks). Employing tens of thousands of people worldwide and taking in billions of dollars in revenue yearly, Nike is certainly a world business leader. Because of this, it is a model for how simple and memorable associations make sense in the marketplace. But Nike is not alone. If one tried to recall phrases and logos that are attached to different businesses, he or she would find that most, if not all of the things that come to mind are short, to the point, and easy to understand. In other words, most would be quite cognitively fluent. This fact seems very much to be proof of concept for cognitive fluency.

This is probably does not strike many people as surprising. We have grown up immersed in the advertising culture and so we naturally associate these types of logos and emblems with successful companies. But we needn’t have had these experiences for the idea to be trivial to us. It is an inherently logical concept because of the mechanisms by which it operates. If we simply cannot understand something, it is almost impossible for us to remember it, much less associate it with a particular company or product. Likewise, if it long and intricate, we may lose interest before comprehending the full meaning, preventing the association from forming in the first place. In another way, we may form the association, but if we cannot remember it, it comes to nothing. This is another hindrance for complex trademarks. And finally, something that the article touched on specifically was our natural affinity for things that are easy and familiar. It quoted a very relevant saying put forth by the psychologist Robert Zajonc to help explain why this is the case evolutionarily, “‘If it is familiar, it has not eaten you yet.’ ”

Not only does the concept of cognitive fluency seem reasonable and widespread, but it is also a concept that can easily be tested. Through simple experiments involving groups of people and looking at trends and market behavior in the past, concrete evidence can be assembled to either support or refute the influence it has in determining the success of a company. That it is a testable hypothesis means that it, given sufficient support (which, as was discussed above, seems quite likely), could become an important theory in psychology, sociology, and economics and give us insight into the nuances of cognitive thinking and our innate preferences. On the other hand, if it fails to accurately predict the data, it could be definitively relegated to the status of an interesting but impractical idea. In either case, we can serve to know more about the ways we operate and how we perceive the world in which we live.

Respond to Easy=True

When I first read the article, especially the subtitle that says, "how 'cognitive fluency' shapes what we believe, how we invest and who will become a supermodel", it sounds outrageous. When I go on to read it, it first sound like a pretty revolutionary finding. However, when people come down to think of it, we probably have known about this for a long time and have been following this rule.

Think about marketing strategy. It is one of the main strategies when a company is designing its ads narrative, its brand name, or even the jingle of the advertisement that they will pick one that is easy for people to pick up. Some of it has to do with the melody of the jingle, the lingo of the words, but most importantly, they want to pick one that is easy to get into people's heads so they would pick one that is easy to read.

Think about why many people change their names when they enter the entertainment industry. Marilyn Monroe wasn't born as Marilyn Monroe. She changed her name for distinction, for the implication of certain names, but more importantly, people can't pronounce Norma Jeane Mortenson when they see it.

Use a example that I see in everyday life. My name is Mengmeng, which most native English speak would pronounce it as "mingming" kind of a thing, but actually, it is pronounced more as "mungmung". Yeah, I know it is confusing and many people tend to be afraid to pronounce it and this becomes a problem when I go to a career fair. After reading this article, I may be will consider having an English nick name for myself so that I don't have to teach people how to pronounce Chinese at every both. But if we back up for a second, I have also encountered many times that people remmember me because they actually spent time thinking about this name. Because I am not Mary or Abby (no offense to any one..), the employer actually remembered me. So what should I do then?

This can be linked back to the discussion in the article: "Disfluency is intriguing and novel and fluent things are familiar but also boring and comfortable." It seems that in the article, the scientists are yet certain about their conclusions yet and this cognitive fluency topic definitely remain an interesting topic for people to study about. Maybe I will wait until then that I'll decide whether I need a real English name or not.