Social Class and Hypercorrection

                One of the interesting things we discussed in our linguistic anthropology class is the way social and economic class can affect the way people speak. I learned a lot, both from the readings as well as our class discussions and lectures. Some of the observations and research seems kind of intuitive, but other parts are things people don’t normally think about.

                The section titled “Language, Social Class, and Identity” in our book Language, Culture, and Society by Zdenek Stanlaw details how dialects and pronunciations, both of specific words as well as general sounds, vary based on social class. People of different classes, or even who think of themselves as being a part of a class, pronounce things differently. An interesting phenomenon detailed in the book is “…an attempt to approach a presumed standard (of pronunciation) goes too far and produces a nonstandard form…” (Salzmann, 392). This phenomenon is called hypercorrection, and while I haven’t personally noticed it a lot in the speech of others around me before, I now am paying attention and noticing it a lot more. It is really interesting to see how people will change their speech or their pronunciation, either to blend in with whatever group they are talking to, or for some reason to make themselves sound different than they normally sound. There could be a myriad of reasons for this, and it probably varies case by case, but I think a lot of the time it could be that people want to sound better or more impressive. It is definitely something I will be trying to observe and think about more from now on.

Reference:

Salzmann, Z., Stanlaw, J., & Adachi, N. (2015). Language, culture, & society: An introduction to    linguistic anthropology (6th ed.). Boulder: Westview Press.