Receptionists
Appear more intelligent by attaching "self" to personal pronouns when conversing with someone.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Sat 9 Apr 2011, 13:49, 8 replies, latest was 14 years ago)

It's funny
because it jars on my very soul.

"Can I just have a signature from yourself?"
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Sun 10 Apr 2011, 1:03, Reply)

I like this
It's quite well observed. The research shows that this kind of thing is typical of lower middle class (and aspiring working class), and women more than men. Lacking the good education afforded their betters, they try ever so hard to speak 'more posh' and fail. They are vaguely aware that multisyllabic words are more fancy than monosyllabic ones, and tend to hypercorrect by choosing the multisyllabic wherever they think it may fit. The hypercorrection is not limited to things like multisyllabic over monosyllabic, you can get crazy dialetical over correction as well. The classic merkin example is that of suburban new yorkers, who hyper correct oy for er (think toity tree for 33) to give the rather amusing terlet for toilet. This ends up in itself being a class marker.

I blame the chronic under investment in public education.
( Sextant goes to him is emotionally erect, on this day, Sun 10 Apr 2011, 2:36, Reply)

show me the research

(fifilaqua did a woopsie i the corner on, Sun 10 Apr 2011, 16:09, Reply)

the evidence
Comprises of a title and the words 'moot point'
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Sun 10 Apr 2011, 17:06, Reply)

No research to hand.
I first read it here:
Language in Society: An Introduction to Sociolinguistics
SUZANNE ROMAINE
Merton College, University of Oxford

Many moons past, when an undergrad. Take that how you will.

She's still active, contributing a chapter to The Handbook of Language and Gender.

Romaine, S. (2008) Variation in Language and Gender, in The Handbook of Language and Gender (eds J. Holmes and M. Meyerhoff), Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Oxford, UK. doi: 10.1002/9780470756942.ch4

Chapter 5 of Sociolinguistic patterns By William Labov deals directly with the matter of Hypercorrection and class and the 'terlet' example given, research admittedly carried out in the early 60s.

There's a bit more on the general subject of the relationships between gender/class and adoption of more 'prestige' forms here:

William Labov (1990). The intersection of sex and social class in the course of linguistic change. Language Variation and Change, 2, pp 205-254

Peter Trudgill (1972). Sex, covert prestige and linguistic change in the urban British English of Norwich. Language in Society, 1, pp 179-195

What comes through all this, is that women tend towards more 'standard' forms and more 'prestige' forms of English than men do. Hypercorrection is overlaid on top of this, and is particularly strong in lower middle class women.
( Sextant goes to him is emotionally erect, on this day, Sun 17 Apr 2011, 4:48, Reply)

the hull accent
A lot of people, particularly the middle class try to lose it. My mate is one of them. The 'o' sound becomes 'ur', Coke is pronounced 'Curk'.
A mate of mine desperately tries to avoid the accent but just ends up overcompensating. When giving his address, instead of saying 'close' rather than 'clurse', he overdoes it and says it as 'clewse'.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Sun 10 Apr 2011, 17:14, Reply)

This research doesn't sound plausible
Sounds more like run-of-the-mill opinionated bollocks to me.

In Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct, he describes a study that found that the group that uses ungrammatical sentences most often are in fact academics and other highly educated professionals - especially those in the languages and humanities.

Everyone is guilty of a little hypercorrection here and there, but trying to use it as a class marker is a bit rich. Your average secretary might occasionally misuse a rule she doesn't properly understand, but a good 95% of her spoken sentences (allowing for filled pauses and other features of spoken language) will be perfectly grammatical, and will use rules unconsciously and effortlessly that are far more complex than the rule governing the my/myself distinction.
(leviticus no longer likes the cut of your gib on, Mon 11 Apr 2011, 12:59, Reply)

they might be more complex
but they are much less fucking annoying
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Mon 11 Apr 2011, 16:53, Reply)