Why Bad Grammar Bothers Us So Much

Does grammar matter? And did you have a teacher in your youth who insisted on drumming the rules of good grammar into you—and was that teacher on the stern and grumpy side of the instructional continuum?

My anecdotal research into these questions over the years has gradually built a composite picture of a somewhat terrifying authority figure, either male or female, who insisted on good grammar as the essential basis of a sound education. They managed to impart enough of it to you so that you cringe when someone uses "among" and "between" interchangeably—or flubs the distinction between 'that" and "which" because of a fatal lack of understanding of the difference between an independent and dependent clause.

Now, a study reveals that your response to those solecisms (and your bad-tempered teacher's response) is indeed physiological: The grammar of language affects us viscerally.

When we hear bad grammar, our pupils dilate, and our heart rate increases, indicating a fight-or-flight response. Interestingly, we respond more forgivingly when the error-prone speaker talks with an accent, probably because we expect (and forgive) grammatical slips more readily from someone for whom our language is not the primary one.

Why should language be so important that we get stressed out when we hear bad grammar? Because successful communication with other people is potentially a matter of life and death in the prehistoric cave. We need to understand what Grob is saying when he shouts a warning over the din of approaching woolly mammoths or something like that. In those moments, bad or confusing grammar could conceivably kill us.

Humans depend on those around us for health, safety, and life. Understanding them is key. You might argue that our ability to form uniquely informative sentences that have never been uttered before has led to our species' outsize success despite our relative physical weaknesses. I'm reminded of the Native American story of the creator giving out gifts to all the animals—strong teeth, claws, warm fur, eagle-eyed vision, and so on—until she came to the human and realized the bag of gifts was empty. So, she gave humans intelligence or wisdom to figure out their predicament.

At this point in our human story, one might wish she had given forethought in larger measure, but it is too late for that; we are what we are, for better or worse.

We do have science, which allows us to connect the body and the mind in interesting ways. We are slowly learning that our unconscious minds rule our behavior far more thoroughly and intricately than we knew. Unpicking the connections should allow us to finally understand why we do such terrible and wonderful things and forgive each other more readily, knowing that we are all instinctual beings in the grip of a collective need to survive.

But we also have faith, and we can hope that it will allow us to continue to seek out the best in each other and our understanding of our role on the planet before it is too late. And let us also pause for a moment and honor that ferocious teacher of grammar, who was on to something, if only unconsciously.

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