It has worked for me. People are impressed when I point out their own sentence structure, things like how many phonemes are in the word "she", etc. I don't know if this also helps signal intelligence, but I also rarely get confused by things people say. Instead of saying, "What?" I say "Oh, I get it. You're trying to say X even though you actually said Y."

Also, I guess it seems like a subject only smart people are interested in. And not even most of them. Guess I got lucky in that regard.