Hypercorrection for reasons of prestige? – Strategical conversational uses of the formulae 'you and I' versus 'you and me'

This paper focuses on strategical conversational uses of the formulae and  in scripted and real dialogues within scenarios of intercultural communication.  The distinctive use of versus  appears to have so far been an... [ view full abstract ]

This paper focuses on strategical conversational uses of the formulae and  in scripted and real dialogues within scenarios of intercultural communication. 

The distinctive use of versus  appears to have so far been an issue primarily addressed in (oftentimes popular scientific) English grammar books prescribing the correct usage of subject and object case (cf. e.g. Good 2002; Cochrane 2004). Hardly any attention, however, has been paid to the (non-)systematic correct as well as hypercorrected uses of the formulae in both subject and object cases in actual conversational context. 

1. This study will show that the formula has been experiencing a diachronic increase for the last 50 years in relation to the (grammatically incorrect) subject case use of . It is argued that this development is partly due to native speakers’ growing desire to use the perceivedly more sophisticated formula for reasons of prestige.
2. Corpus data suggests that this development is enhanced by a strong tendency in telecinematic media to promote an overgeneralized and hypercorrective use of in the object case. 
3. It will be hypothesized that non-native speakers, who have been explicitly taught the grammatical distinction between I and me, may refrain from imitating the native speakers’ overgeneralized usage of the formula . 

This study will adhere to corpus data extracted from (1) the spoken sections of the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and the British National Corpus (BNC), (2) a self-built corpus of TV scripts, as well as (3) smaller, intercultural datasets provided by the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE) and the Albany Corpus of Intercultural Communication (ACIC).

Cochrane, James.  2004. Between You and I: A Little Book of Bad English. Icon.

Emonds, J. 1986. Grammatically deviant prestige constructions. In Festschrift for Sol Saporta, ed. M. Brame et al., 93–129. Noit.

Good, C. Edward. 2002. A Grammar Book for You and I—Oops, Me! Capital Books. 

Sobin, Nicholas. 2009. Prestige Case Forms and the Comp-trace Effect. Syntax 12(1): 32-59.