# Critical Reactions to Bad Grammar

## <a name="contents">Contents</a>
* Sensitivity to Defects in Patterns
* Costs of Non-conformity
* Choosing How to React When Blemishes are Noticed

Starting artists and writers tend to have trouble appreciating the demands of the audience. The novice can fail to appreciate them in many ways. Some out of contempt, others out of negligence. But eventually, if the artist does not give up, the audience becomes vitally important. If one is *lucky enough* to have a large audience, one receives the greatest viewing—the greatest potential level of feedback and criticism. With the largest possible group now paying attention, one can discover what the reception is among masters, and the most critical of critics. The works that are of the greatest talent will, if not immediately, rise to prominence, for lack of ability to discover *defects*. 

There are popular works and there are masterworks. The masterworks are sometimes overlooked, because people cannot understand them. They are too complex. One cannot even discredit the creator, for lack of understanding! Eventually experts will scrutinize, and if few defects are found, prominence is assured. But they often will not look until they see others looking themselves! There are other important factors than this in determining what becomes a masterpiece to posterity, but any work riddled with defects will not attain that place, at least not for long.

The higher the expectations, the larger the audience, the more important it is to be perfect. Not perfect in the sense that the best of all possible options was chosen, or that the most aesthetically pleasing choices for the moment were made. It merely means "blemish free." There is nothing to distract, nothing that causes pain to the audience.

There are certain times and places where mistakes in language are especially irritating. No one wants to read a misspelling in an advertisement, or on the headline on a major newspaper. There are places where higher standards are expected by almost anyone who is exposed. People who are less demanding and particular will be more willing to overlook mistakes, but will still suffer a bit when they notice severe blemishes in places where they are typically costly to those responsible for them. But less sensitive people tend to be flexible, in that they will allow for more mistakes in informal environments than say. People who consider themselves in a social elite seem more uniform in their expectations—and thereby appear more inflexible.

Being bothered by poor grammar, pronunciations, misspellings, and other basic mistakes of language, is something quite automatic. There is no guilt to be felt by those who cringe highly blemished communications. It is reflexive.

Regardless of anyones readiness to criticize others for their grammatical errors, people are generally uncomfortable when grammatical mistakes are detected in the speech of others. Even in groups where speech is informal and relaxed, there are rules of acceptability—and acceptability is not as simple as people recognize. People are unreflective and unaware about the source of their judgments. It seems people's reactions to mistakes in language is reflexive, as would be noticed by the quickness to critique. We must divide our judgments into several different categories:

* Grammaticality judgments.
* Acceptability judgments.
* Social judgments.

There are many more possible subdivisions than this, but for simplicity we will focus primarily on these.

## Costs of Nonconformity

What are the costs of making grammatical errors? More accurately: what are the costs of not conforming to the expectations of the grammatical elite? What or the costs of not *uniformly* applying the "Queen's English." 

Firstly, one is punished merely by not being uniform in usage. Elite figures would be questioned if they ever deviated from speaking in ways that conform with their status. Politicians are routinely criticized for this. Politicians pander to specific ethnic groups by unnaturally attempting to talk like them. If they were more natural and "fit in" then it is possible to get away with it, but in general one is expected to act like one's social group, even when mixed with another group and the origin group is no longer around. This is the societal judgment. It seems that groups are unable to restrict this form of judgment to members of their own group. They can *come to be understanding* or *tolerant* about the behavior of other groups, but this is an aspect of maturation that is not there originally. So the tendency is towards Xenophobia, which is not surprising.

Costs are not entirely top-down or bottom-up, but are more "us vs. them." When groups collide and are intermingled, confusion and discomfort are created. One group has to witness an individual they are familiar with acting like a member of another group. They see this person moving freely between groups, while they are confined to their own group. This is uncomfortable. "How can this other person act *like that*, or *speak like that*? we might think. 

These sorts of observations should show plainly that rules within one group do not necessarily carry over to another group, or another context. Yet this is precisely what we witness when a pedantic individual attempts to enforce rules. Routinely these people come across as "know it all" or "intolerant" or simply as people who do not understand. Although we perceive a certain type of English to be the superior one, this is really a matter of social status, and not a scientific observation. However, it is true that the ruling classes tend to be better educated than others, so there is reason to think there is desirability to higher grammar (else it would not be continually connected with larger amounts of money, and economists teach us that greater income leads to greater overall well being).

So really judgments from the upper class, towards outsiders of that class, not only have the characteristics of elitism, but are actually elitist. Furthermore there is a clear power differential. And the result is that some come to accept the power of the elite and conform to their expectations, while others react against it and prefer flexibility and move about other groups more freely. This is a satisfying explanation of the bifurcation between those who are ready to criticize against a ruling standard and those who are not: one simply has a tendency towards accepting the elitist perspective while others are reacting against it. This is a natural duality we would expect to exist, and in fact we routinely witness it.

## Sensitivity to Defects in Patterns

There is a general human tendency to feel discomfort in the presence of a defect. While it is a human tendency, it is not exclusive to humans. It is everywhere in nature, since animals tend to prefer others of the same species that are more aesthetically pleasing. This usually implies they have a patterned appearance that includes the right amount of consistencies in colors, textures, and symmetries. Humans and animals alike seem to dislike disorderliness even outside this context, in the observations of animals from other species. All human aesthetics seem to obey similar rules in this regard. We have a distaste for blemishes in all of our arts—in musical performances, artwork, literature, and fashion. 

People are also very uniform in their estimations of high art. Some training and mental sophistication is required for admiration of the very highest works, but for the most part all people are quick to assent to the greatness of humanity's finest achievements.

What is it that we can say about all the very greatest works we know of? While we may not be able to compare their diverse features, especially in different disciplines, we can say that the very best works have the *fewest* defects. Many are of such great complexity, that we would expect to find more defects, and yet we often find fewer. From this we can judge that the universal accolades of such works are due to the fact that so few people can find anything wrong with them. Experts will point out that no human achievement is free of defects, and can quickly point them out. But even the experts will admire the power of the creators and even enjoy the works more for the reminders that they are not creations of machines or alien life, but of living human beings like ourselves. So we might say that a production is expected to be better, and have better taste, if an expert in the craft is likely to grow more fond of the work as they increase their mastery of the subject, and not less. 

Now that we have some idea about why people might be sensitive to perceived imperfections in communication, we can move on to why some might be more irritated and quicker to correct errors when they witness them.

What is interesting is that the frequency that this discomfort is experienced is related to the degree of mental development. Either one is highly intelligent and sees defects everywhere, or one attained a level of mastery of something that lends to detecting errors. Intelligent people and experts are largely intuitive error finders.

Experts will be the ones that will spot the most errors, and will be at pains to explain *precisely why they are mistakes to begin with*. They end up suffering on many levels. First they notice the errors more frequently. Secondly they tend to be more personally invested and concerned about the preservation of a craft and betterment through education. And lastly, since they are experts, they continually find themselves at a loss to communicate reasons which must be to abstruse for ready comprehension by most people encountered.

* Choosing How to React When Blemishes are Noticed

Personally, I wonder why so many of these people persist in judgments and open critiques of others after many years of experience that one would think would also result in desensitization. I for one am quite desensitized. The reason why I am not interested in judging people for their grammatical mistakes in *most* contexts is pragmatism—it is usually not constructive or taken well by the recipient. Educated people like to think themselves educators but they think this incorrectly. There are proper times and places to expend effort, and even in cases where it could be called for there is no responsibility to correct others for their unfortunate grammar.

But there are other considerations besides this.

The other interpretation, of course, is more about the feeling one has when exposed to supposedly incorrect grammar. This makes for better conversation because it is what would prompt criticism to begin with, and gives a chance for reduction and creation of the required distinctions of terms.

In areas where all humans are extremely powerful, like with vision, this is obvious. We like symmetry and cleanliness. We have the urge to groom other when we see something is out of order, like other primates, and when we see something out of place, it makes us very uncomfortable. Some think primates groom only for social reasons. In my opinion this is not the correct interpretation of the behavior. The correct interpretation is that primates desire to *fix* blemishes that they see in members of their species that are close to them. While this results in social behavior, it is apparent that it is not intentionally for that sake. Really it serves dual purposes, but it is clear, that in social encounters such as this, the grooming behavior provides some relief to the groomer. It is satisfying to correct defects—especially those defects that one imagines are repugnant to oneself. This is the reason a human cannot resist removing an insect from another human, or cleaning off another's face. Not only is it a blemish that creates discomfort, but it is a blemish that one would be repulsed to have on oneself. We are all quite good at this and seek out other people and arts that are blemish free.

We can see how this behavior would extend beyond the purely visual to the grammatical. People don't like to think that they make errors of any kind, especially ones that would provoke the wrong judgment. So when a grammatical mistake is made, one wishes to disown it immediately, or else explain it away. Since this is the case, when it is encountered in others, there is a need to fix it, usually politely. There is a kind of grooming inside of the behavior of grammatical correction. "I will fix you and relieve a tension in myself. I hope also you would fix me." For some people, this goes beyond relieving tension and creating positive social interaction. Since people are sensitive to making mistakes, it can also be used to establish supremacy. "I would never be dirty like you; I would never make the language errors you are now making." Even within the mentor-student relationship this is apparent. It also explains why the mentor wishes to continually find defects in the work of the student, else there would be no way to justify the unequal relationship. 

Now the interesting question is *when exactly* does it make sense to have a reaction, and what kind of reaction should one have, when exposed to a certain defect? How do we respond to defects in a musical performance? How about when we detect an error of grammar?

I take this to be a question that relates to moral philosophy and value theory.

In a linguistics course I took, we covered the status of Ebonics. We were told by the professor that we should refrain from judgment of other dialects, and take an objective position assuming equality of different regional languages. In an oral presentation I gave, I questioned this assumption, since we have to establish values between alternatives for comparison, to say they have the same value. How can two things be equal if we haven't measured anything or assigned values? Inequality should be assumed. So when making comparisons between dialects, one has to assume that one does not have the information to make such a comparison and temporarily refrain from judgment.

In real life people quickly jump to judge according to their upbringing and sense of value. I suspect some here think themselves defenders of higher English fairly rigidly, and others are defenders of contextual freedom and flexibility. Even lazy language has a place, they might say. Personally I think we have too little information to go far in this discussion, because questions about grammaticality takes many forms and arises in many situations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammaticality

My personal opinion is that this is an issue of education, and should be taken up in that context, to set the proper baselines for successful communication. Elsewhere I would ask "What success have you had trying to correct others, and how does it usually turn out for you socially when you attempt to do so?"

## Response on FB

A short opening post tends to create more interest, and I think this thread has suffered from limitations of attracting interest on FB. So the thread has bifurcated due to two lines of interpretation, as Fred separated in his post.

Initially I interpreted the question by filling in context with assumptions. I took the OP to be a justified complaint, rather than an opening to a general treatment of the topic. Jordan understands grammar so I thought she might be pointing out excess nitpicking in English language pedants, that surely exists (even with this thread). I suspect this is the correct interpretation, given how it is stated, but responses to both would be expected. 
