I IS PRESTIGIOUS: A FEASIBILITY STUDY OF HYPERCORRECTION IN THE ACCUSATIVE CASE IN AMERICAN ENGLISH A RESEARCH PAPER SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS BY BENJAMIN D. BISHOP GUILHERME DUARTE GARCIA - ADVISOR BALL STATE UNIVERSITY MUNCIE, INDIANA MAY 2020 1 I IS PRESTIGIOUS Page 2 Contents 1 Abstract 4 2 Introduction 4 2.1 Linguistic Viruses . 4 2.2 Hypercorrection . 5 2.3 Identity in L1 English Hypercorrection . 7 2.4 Instructional Implications . 9 2.5 Objective . 10 3 Methods 12 4 Experiment 1 13 4.1 Methodology, Experiment 1 . 13 4.2 Results, Experiment 1 . 15 4.3 Discussion, Experiment 1 . 17 4.3.1 Hypercorrection and grouping . 17 4.3.2 Hypercorrection and time in residence . 18 4.3.3 Hypercorrection and age . 19 4.3.4 Hypercorrection and degree . 19 4.4 Overall Discussion . 19 5 Experiment 2 20 5.1 Methodology Experiment 2 . 20 5.2 Results, Experiment 2 . 21 5.3 Discussion, Experiment 2 . 23 5.3.1 Positional Import . 23 5.3.2 Education . 24 5.3.3 Age . 24 I IS PRESTIGIOUS Page 3 6 General Discussion 25 6.1 Degree and hypercorrection in culture . 25 6.2 Age and hypercorrection in culture . 26 6.3 The linguistic virus' structure . 27 6.3.1 The Linguistic Virus' Internal Structure . 27 6.3.2 The Linguistic Virus' External Placement . 28 6.3.3 The Linguistic Virus' Virulence . 28 6.4 Implications for instruction . 28 7 Conclusions 29 8 Implications for Future Research 30 I IS PRESTIGIOUS Page 4 1 Abstract Hypercorrection is an overgeneralization of a prestige semantic struc- ture (Piattelli-Palmarini and Uriagereka, 2004). In this study on the feasi- bility of the study of hypercorrection in English, I discuss the implications of hypercorrection of first-person pronouns within noun pairs, such as \Bill and me," versus \Bill and I", in terminal and medial positions. Results show that speakers hypercorrect to an extent which is significant to draw some conclusions and warrant a further study, as well as showing that age appears to have a significant effect on the frequency of hypercorrection. 2 Introduction Hypercorrection is often demonstrated as being an intrinsic factor of those from a nonstandard dialect of English(DeCamp, 1972). This prescrip- tive approach to the use of hypercorrection therefore implies that the act is a mistake made by those who are not as skilled in the language as a well- educated native speaker. The following section will provide some degree of background of this topic, which will be followed by the methodology for the study undertaken, and the results, all of which come together to ask: How often do native speakers of American English hypercorrect, what factors in- fluence hypercorrection, and is it something which should be discussed in English Education? As such, the study will be looking into the extent to which First-Language (L1) speakers of American English hypercorrect ut- terances, specifically looking at those which change from the first-person accusative case into a nominative form. 2.1 Linguistic Viruses A linguistic virus, here defined as a summarization of Piattelli-Palmarini and Uriagereka (2004) and Lasnik and Sobin (2000), would be a prestige form I IS PRESTIGIOUS Page 5 of a language which emerges as a grammatically incorrect construction. A phonetic example of this would be the pronunciation of the word \forte" as [fOôteI], rather than the phonologically- and historically-driven pronunciation [fOôt]. The former, given its spelling and french-esque pronunciation, could easily be perceived as the more prestigious, given the tendency of latinate languages to be so determined in English-speaking communities (Lutz, 2013). In order to understand hypercorrection we must first regard the con- cept of a linguistic virus and how, precisely, one may come to be. To begin, the universal grammar version of a linguistic virus takes it as a biological left- over, in the strain of so-called junk DNA (Ponting and Lunter, 2006; Piattelli- Palmarini and Uriagereka, 2004). This concept essentially posits that lan- guage, upon the emergence of a different linguistic system in a speaker, leaves behind its lexical and semantic footprint, as a sort of interlanguage (Kasper and Blum-Kulka, 1993). This causes the speaker of a language to be reliant upon their original linguistic system in order to produce language in a Sec- ond Language (L2), this leading to a system-wide interlanguage (Selinker and Rutherford, 2013). This is certainly one manner through which a lin- guistic virus may emerge. However, a truer one would be best looked at less as a result of maintaining linguistic information by one speaker, and more along the lines of a grammatically incorrect piece of language passed from one speaker to another, either vertically or horizontally, by way of a com- munity of practice and prestige speech (Piattelli-Palmarini and Uriagereka, 2004; Lasnik and Sobin, 2000). 2.2 Hypercorrection A linguistic virus hereforth shall refer to the phenomenon of mainte- nance of form and structure of a phrase or word based upon not its gram- matically correct position and conjugation, but upon the method through which it operates in accordance to special rules which allow it an exceptional place wherein rules of grammar or orthography need not apply. I IS PRESTIGIOUS Page 6 Hypercorrection is often defined as being an aspect of L2 English speakers, these speakers overapplying rules and concepts which were given to them in order to correct their language into one which is far beyond what the rules of English actually permit (DeCamp, 1972). This overapplication of a rule serves as the basis for our concept here. Take, for example, an L1 English speaker who determines, whether consciously or unconsciously, that \I" is a more socially advanced use of the first-person pronoun than is \me." This belief then translates into a consis- tent use of the believed privileged form of the pronoun, even in situations when it would be grammatically correct to use the less-privileged form. An example of this would be the use of \were" in order to create a subjunctive sentence which is not intended as such, though processed as being a more advanced and \prestigious" form of grammar. This is further explored in Ryan (1961). This is the definition of hypercorrection which shall be studied in the following experiments. For the purposes of this study, we will observe the hypercorrection of the English-Language accusative case into the pronoun form which is gener- ally present in the nominative case. Take, for example, the sentences: 1. Lily loves James and me. 2. Lily loves James and I. Example 1 Sentence 2 in Example 1 demonstrates the supplantation of the ac- cusative form the English first person \me" in a group with one which does not track with traditional grammatical structures, specifically, \I." This rule of \I" being perceived as more prestigious may very well be due to the un- derstanding of \me" in the nominative case is traditionally used in media to portray those who have an incomplete handle on language and/or are unin- telligent. As such, the rule of saying \I" instead of the accusative alternative is established as being prestigious. I IS PRESTIGIOUS Page 7 Given that the occurrence of this instance of hypercorrection is gen- erally agreed upon in the linguistic community, the objectives of this paper will be A) to establish its frequency of use among members of the target population and B) to establish the extent to which L2 English learners may need to know about this change. 2.3 Identity in L1 English Hypercorrection This phenomenon of rule overgeneralization extends beyond second language learning, however, as students from nonstandard American dialects of English have been shown to demonstrate hypercorrect responses in up to 15% of cases in the L1 English language classroom, specifically in primary school grammar classes (Pfaff, 1976). This phenomenon has been demon- strated as not established solely in the English language classroom. As a matter of fact, there are established cases of this specific rule generalization in native speakers who rank highly in academia, the likes of which exchanged \was" for \were," which is used in order to make the mood subjunctive, but was not standard in the studied dialect at the time (Ryan, 1961; Cazden, 1975). Looking more into the processes behind these changes, previous liter- ature makes apparent the system of linguistic stratification among pronun- ciation and lexical decisions. Take, for example, Labov (1972), wherein the language choices made by speakers of AAE designate them as members of the African American community. Taking this into account with the find- ings of Pfaff (1976), one may draw the conclusion that the hypercorrection undertaken may be in order to form an identity which fits in more with a population showing a distinct lexical variety which may be different from that which the speaker is already a part of, which further adheres to the definition of hypercorrection as established here. This phenomenon of identity construction and deconstruction by way of linguistic choices is established rather thoroughly in the literature. Take, I IS PRESTIGIOUS Page 8 for example, the work which has been done by Podesva (2011) in the Califor- nia and Texas Gay communities, which indicate that individuals' linguistic choices underlie their intended persona within a community of practice. For example, the structures which a speaker takes in order to get across a set of identity markers may indicate that this speaker is a set of personality markers which indicate their intended final personality structure. In the case of Podesva and Chun (2007), multiple factors came together in order to de- termine that a speaker may be a \diva," with this determined by a set of personality traits and phonological choices.