MENSA and NAGTY (high IQ)

Finally, some sense is being input into this discussion. I'd be a little controversial and say most, not many, gained their place by those merits.

'Whom' is an object pronoun; 'who' is the subject. Let's be wary of whom we accuse of 'pretension', having taken such obvious pains to assert our own linguistic legerdemain. Otherwise:



I absolutely concur. I might qualify for MENSA; it would do little, however, toward demonstrating academic potential. Indeed, it is trite that MENSA's 'active' constituency comprises either such monumental prodigies as will have enjoyed effortless distinction in all other walks of life and, compelled by a sense of 'noblesse oblige' [their own narcissism], wish to espouse a society dedicated exclusively to the celebration and promulgation of human cultural advancement [themselves] through intellectual refinement [posturing]; or disaffected intellects of marginal standing and meagre accomplishment, who seek a kind of approbation and peer-validation that they cannot reasonably expect elsewhere; or an amalgam of the two: gifted but ineffectual misanthropes that are too consumed by ennui, cynicism or acute neuroses to pursue the careers in law, medicine and/or quantum-physics that they were otherwise born to. The archetypal (okay, stereotypical) 'mensan' left school with a constellation of GCSEs and a triumvirate of A-Levels, only to flounder at university because they couldn't negotiate living independently/were too-easily distracted/prone to tangential digressions/ruminating on Proust, and found themselves shortly thereafter eking out an ignominious occupation conducting buses or teaching at inner-city schools. They joined MENSA in order to fraternise constructively with people of (broadly speaking) university-level intelligence, absent the raft of obligations concomitant with university attendance. (At least, that's why I'd join.)

Your modicum of academic potential will already be apparent from your A-Level predictions. It is axiomatic that whilst virtually anyone of reasonable intelligence will succeed at A-Level, not everyone who succeeds at A-Level is (broadly-speaking) 'intelligent', at least not in a manner conducive to 'redbrick' education: hence interviews; because the premonition of someone whose own 'intellect' has been already sanctioned and affirmed beyond reproach is probably as reliable a barometer as any. Thus, to attempt artificially tipping the balance by citation of vague and spurious, if not altogether unaccountable, evidence for some nebulous notion of 'intelligence' possessed of yourself would betray sheer arrogance. Personal statements are supposed to exhibit character; they are complementary to what is an otherwise one-dimensional, academic profile. By all means allude to the time when you orchestrated a three-hundred man 'chess-off' at your local MENSA chapter, to which qualification would be an incidental pre-requisite (because some people's 'character' is, after all, intellectual; and academic intellectuals are the bread-and-butter of Oxbridge), but don't expect that they will apportion to it any more weight than the prospective mathmo's professed affinity for one-digit cryptic su-doku.

Indeed, as someone mentioned previously, citing MENSA membership as though a bona fide certification of intelligence (even assuming 'intelligence' were the sole criterion for admission to Oxford/Cambridge) would probably suggest naïveté more than anything else. Why should the admissions tutor dispose himself any more favourably toward your application as a result than would a MENSA adjutant toward someone, who possibly fell short on the I.Q. front, for having scrawled 'I got into Cambridge!' in hysterical, italicised font across the front of their exam-script? The two simply don't equate.

Of course, were MENSA an exam-board, and a score of '130+' deemed equivalent to 'AAA', perhaps it would be different.

This is entirely off topic, for which I apologise in advance, but it angered me slightly. You tell somebody off for attempting to sound cleverer than they are and then proceed to post an awfully long post full of very clever sounding words. This post you used the words "adjutant", "axiomatic", "triumvirate", "nebulous", "ignomious" and "approbation". There are two words there that I couldn't use in a sentence. You start your post "I absolutely concur", for goodness sake. The first rule of writing well is to write clearly, and you fail spectacularly. Try writing in a plainer fashion and people might actually finish your posts.

Hint: I wouldn't recommend using 'ignomious'.

Strictly speaking, you might use it; it's a variant spelling (if a rather outdated one). Although I suppose it is a bit uncommon...

Not the one I used, however. Still, what's your source? (I'm genuinely intrigued.)

This is entirely off topic, for which I apologise in advance, but it angered me slightly. You tell somebody off for attempting to sound cleverer than they are and then proceed to post an awfully long post full of very clever sounding words. This post you used the words "adjutant", "axiomatic", "triumvirate", "nebulous", "ignomious" and "approbation". There are two words there that I couldn't use in a sentence. You start your post "I absolutely concur", for goodness sake. The first rule of writing well is to write clearly, and you fail spectacularly. Try writing in a plainer fashion and people might actually finish your posts.

I'd far rather read a post littered with a few grammatical mistakes than the stuff you write, which seems to me to be an exercise in showing off your vocabulary.

You all seem to occupy that same stolid, tedious, dogmatic Orwellian mode: with your 'rules' for writing 'well', as though Orwell's trite bloody opinion on the subject was ever in any way definitive (or even, at the risk of descending into self-parody, axiomatic). Orwell may have been a clever sod, but some of his attitudes were tantamount to monomania.

that there is an essential differentiation with respect to cognitive patterns between various languages (with such attendant beliefs that Eskimos have several words for snow)

Besides, it should be obvious that as far as a language is adapted to the conditions it is used in, it embodies a form of life, and concomitant cognitive activity.

Well of course - artists across cultures will draw in evidently different manners, but surely this is merely a reflection of cultural elements impinging upon what is essentially the same process. Even if one is accustomed to draw in a certain way this does not in turn preclude apprehension of other works from other cultures, if one understands the assumptive beliefs attached therewith.

Yes, though finding cognitive processes embedded in practical language use is rather a different matter from finding them in (representational) art, whose 'grammars' are defined within much narrow contexts.

The grammar may well be more complex, but that does not necessarily suggest the grammar and the associated cognitive processes of two languages therefore show greater variance.