Hypervernacularisation and speaker design: A case study

Abstract

In dialect contact situations, hyperdialectisms are a common form of hyperadaptation. They are the result of the production of overgeneralised forms in non-standard dialects due to bad analysis. They occur either because of insufficient knowledge about a given linguistic feature or because of excessive effort to show vernacular identity. Adopting the framework of Speaker-Design Theory, which assumes that speakers mould their speech to project a particular image, the present article shows the use of the related phenomenon of hypervernacularisation. This refers to non-standard forms used correctly, though inappropriately, according to socio-demographic and/or stylistic parameters. Though both hyperdialectism and hypervernacularisation are linguistic processes resulting from dialect contact, hyperdialectism is related to incorrectness, whereas hypervernacularisation is associated with inappropriateness. The unexpected use of vernacular forms by an upper-class speaker in non-informal contexts appears to be a strategy to project downward social mobility and a working-class image.

Style dominance: Attention, audience, and the ‘real me’

“…Individuals can of course reflexively perform and stylize vernaculars, exploiting knowledge of shared norms and wider indexical fields (e.g. Coupland 1980, 1985; Schilling-Estes 1998; Eckert 2001; Cutillas-Espinosa, Hernández-Campoy, & Schilling-Estes 2010). Such is the power of these findings in recent work, that it becomes tempting to see all style variation as the strategic execution of social stances.…”

Investigating the Effect of Socio-Cognitive Salience and Speaker-Based Factors in Morpho-Syntactic Life-Span Change

“…Thus, similarly to the avoidance of ties and formal terms of address, his adoption of innovative got and continuously high rates of incoming have got might be part of the more egalitarian and anti-authoritarian persona he aims to project. This hypothesis might be supported by Aidan’s strategic uses of “hyper-vernacular” forms, such as ain’t and multiple negation (as in 6; see Cutillas-Espinosa, Hernández-Campoy & Schilling-Estes 2010).…”

Estudio sociolingüístico de las intervenciones políticas y públicas de los presidentes del gobierno extremeño

“…Ejemplo de ello es la estandarización a la que están sometidos personajes públicos de áreas innovadoras del español que trabajan tanto en cadenas nacionales como regionales, y que se ven obligados a cambiar sus rasgos vernáculos por un español neutro. Es lo que observaron Cutillas y Hernández Campoy (2006;2018) en Murcia, y lo que se comprueba en presentadoras andaluzas tan conocidas como María Teresa Campos (Cutillas-Espinosa y Hernández-Campoy, 2007), que abandonan su variedad lingüística en programas nacionales, pero que usan formas vernáculas cuando son entrevistadas en otros medios.…”