By Lilian H. Hill
Emotional literacy refers to recognizing, understanding, and effectively expressing emotions. It involves being aware of your feelings, the ability to label them accurately, and understanding the reasons behind them. Additionally, emotional literacy involves being able to manage and regulate your emotions in healthy ways while at the same time empathizing with others and their emotional states. Ninivaggi (2022) describes emotional literacy as a “deep understanding of one's emotions, empathetically listening to others, and responding effectively and meaningfully” (para. 1). Emotionally literate People are often better equipped to navigate social interactions, manage conflicts, and build strong relationships. They can communicate their needs and boundaries more effectively and are often more resilient in the face of challenges because they have the skills to cope with difficult emotions.
Emotions and Vocabulary
A limited vocabulary can limit your world. Author Brené Brown (2021) stated that “language is our portal to meaning-making, connection, healing, learning, and self-awareness” (p. 242). Language allows us to make sense of our life experiences. The stronger your vocabulary is, the better you can understand your own life and share your experiences with others close to you.
As human beings, we make meaning of our life experiences. We seek to understand ourselves, our place in the world, and the world itself. No other species we know has this urge to assign meaning to different life experiences. As humans, we want to understand ourselves, our loves, our work, our world, and our place. We can think about our lives and our interactions with other people. Humans need meaning, and humanity is made from meaning.
Making meaning involves our emotions, which serve as the link between learning and memory. We literally must feel something is true before it can be believed and learned. Emotions increase the strength of memories and help us recall the context of an experience, rendering it meaningful. Brown (2021) asks her readers to imagine what life would be like if we could only name three emotions: happy, sad, and angry.
A limited vocabulary can significantly restrict our understanding and expression of experiences. Language is vital for making sense of life, connecting with others, and fostering self-awareness and growth. The richness of one's vocabulary directly correlates with one's ability to comprehend and articulate life's complexities to oneself and those around one.
Brown (2021) highlights the importance of an expansive emotional vocabulary, suggesting that a limited range of emotions hampers our self-understanding. A narrow emotional lexicon, consisting primarily of “happy,” “sad,” and “angry,” fails to capture the breadth and depth of human emotional experience. By expanding our emotional vocabulary to encompass a wider array of positive and negative feelings, we gain a more nuanced understanding of ourselves and our interactions with the world.
Furthermore, Brown (2021) emphasizes that our emotional vocabulary influences how we experience and manage emotions. Refining our ability to identify and articulate our feelings enables us to navigate life's challenges more effectively. Additionally, a diverse emotional vocabulary facilitates better communication and empathy, improving our relationships with others. In summary, cultivating a rich emotional vocabulary is essential for enhancing self-awareness, shaping our future, managing emotions, and fostering meaningful connections.
Relationship of Emotional
Literacy to Information Literacy
Emotional and information literacy are essential skills in today's complex world. Matteson et al. (2013) explored research documenting an affective component to interacting with information. They stated that information literacy processes, including identifying the need for information, finding it, comprehending it, and applying it, are associated with various emotions. Connections between the emotional and information literacy are described below:
Critical Thinking: Both emotional literacy and information literacy require critical thinking skills. Emotional literacy involves understanding and critically evaluating one's own emotions and the emotions of others, while information literacy involves critically evaluating sources of information for credibility, bias, and relevance.
Decision Making: Both skill sets contribute to effective decision-making. Emotional literacy helps individuals consider their emotions and how they might influence their choices, while information literacy enables individuals to gather and assess relevant information to make informed decisions. Recent studies have underscored the importance of emotion in rational decision-making. Our emotional responses significantly influence our decisions, and our overall welfare could hinge on our capacity to comprehend and analyze these emotions, integrating them with logical reasoning to arrive at suitable decisions (Ratson, 2023).
Communication: Emotional literacy involves expressing emotions effectively and understanding the emotions conveyed by others, which is essential for clear and empathetic communication. Information literacy includes effectively communicating ideas, findings, and arguments, whether in written or verbal form.
Self-awareness and Self-regulation: Emotional literacy fosters self-awareness and self-regulation by helping individuals understand their emotional responses and manage them appropriately. Similarly, information literacy encourages self-awareness about one's knowledge gaps and biases and self-regulation in seeking out and evaluating information to fill those gaps and mitigate biases.
Problem Solving: Emotional and information literacy contribute to effective problem-solving skills. Emotional literacy helps individuals understand the underlying emotions and find constructive ways to address them, while information literacy enables individuals to gather and analyze relevant information to solve problems effectively.
While emotional literacy primarily focuses on understanding and managing emotions, and information literacy focuses on finding, evaluating, and using information, both skill sets are interconnected and mutually reinforcing. Developing emotional and information literacy proficiency can enhance an individual's ability to navigate various aspects of life, make informed decisions, communicate effectively, and solve problems.
References
Brown, B. (2021). Atlas of the heart: Mapping meaningful connection and the language of human experience. Random House.
Matteson, M., Farooq, O., & Mease, D. (2013, April 12). Feeling our way: Emotional intelligence and information literacy competency. Association of College and Research Libraries Conference, Indianapolis, IN.
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