In sociolinguistics, hypercorrection is the nonstandard use of language that results from the overapplication of a perceived rule of language-usage prescription. A speaker or writer who produces a hypercorrection generally believes through a misunderstanding of such rules that the form or phrase they use is more "correct", standard, or otherwise preferable, often combined with a desire to appear formal or educated. Linguistic hypercorrection occurs when a real or imagined grammatical rule is applied in an inappropriate context, so that an attempt to be "correct" leads to an incorrect result. It does not occur when a speaker follows "a natural speech instinct", according to Otto Jespersen and Robert J. Menner. Hypercorrection can be found among speakers of less prestigious language varieties who attempt to produce forms associated with high-prestige varieties, even in situations where speakers of those varieties would not. Some commentators call such production hyperurbanism. Hypercorrection can occur in many languages and wherever multiple languages or language varieties are in contact.
Types of overapplied rules Studies in sociolinguistics and applied linguistics have noted the overapplication of rules of phonology, syntax, or morphology, resulting either from different rules in varieties of the same language or second-language learning. An example of a common hypercorrection based on application of the rules of a second (i.e. new, foreign) language is the use of octopi for the plural of octopus in English; this is based on the faulty assumption that octopus is a second declension word of Latin origin when in fact it is third declension and comes from Greek. Sociolinguists often note hypercorrection in terms of pronunciation (phonology). For example, William Labov noted that all of the English speakers he studied in New York City in the 1960s tended to pronounce words such as hard as rhotic (pronouncing the "R" as rather than ) more often when speaking carefully. Furthermore, middle class speakers had more rhotic pronunciation than working class speakers did. However, lower-middle class speakers had more rhotic pronunciation than upper-middle class speakers. Labov suggested that these lower-middle class speakers were attempting to emulate the pronunciation of upper-middle class speakers, but were actually over-producing the very noticeable R-sound. A common source of hypercorrection in English speakers' use of the language's morphology and syntax happens in the use of pronouns (see § Personal pronouns). Hypercorrection can also occur when learners of a new-to-them (second, foreign) language try to avoid applying grammatical rules from their native language to the new language (a situation known as language transfer). The effect can occur, for example, when a student of a new language has learned that certain sounds of their original language must usually be replaced by another in the studied language, but has not learned when not to replace them. In addition, the special case of a pseudo-hypercorrection has been identified where standard usage is at issue, but accidentally, i.e., where a speaker luckily produces a correct result.
English English has no authoritative body or language academy codifying norms for standard usage, unlike some other languages. Nonetheless, within groups of users of English, certain usages are considered unduly elaborate adherences to formal rules. Such speech or writing is sometimes called hyperurbanism, defined by Kingsley Amis as an "indulged desire to be posher than posh".
Personal pronouns In 2004, Jack Lynch, assistant professor of English at Rutgers University, said on Voice of America that the correction of the subject-positioned "you and me" to "you and I" leads people to "internalize the rule that 'you and I' is somehow more proper, and they end up using it in places where they should not – such as 'he gave it to you and I' when it should be 'he gave it to you and me.'" However, the linguists Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum write that utterances such as "They invited Sandy and I" are "heard constantly in the conversation of people whose status as speakers of Standard English is clear" and that "[t]hose who condemn it simply assume that the case of a pronoun in a coordination must be the same as when it stands alone. Actual usage is in conflict with this assumption."
H-adding Some British accents, such as Cockney, drop the initial h from words; e.g., have becomes 'ave. A hypercorrection associated with this is H-adding, adding an initial h to a word which would not normally have one. An example of this can be found in the speech of the character Parker in the marionette TV series Thunderbirds, e.g., "We'll 'ave the haristocrats 'ere soon". Parker's speech was based on a real person the creators encountered at a restaurant in Cookham.
Hyperforeignism
Hyperforeignism arises from speakers misidentifying the distribution of a pattern found in loanwords and extending it to other environments. The result of this process does not reflect the rules of either language. For example, habanero is sometimes pronounced as though it were spelled "habañero", in imitation of other Spanish words like jalapeño and piñata. Machismo is sometimes pronounced "makizmo", apparently as if it were Italian, rather than the phonetic English pronunciation which resembles the original Spanish word, /mɑːˈtʃiz.mo/. Similarly, the z in chorizo is sometimes pronounced as /ts/ (as if it were Italian), whereas the original Spanish pronunciation has /θ/ or /s/.
English as a second language Some English-Spanish cognates primarily differ by beginning with s instead of es, such as the English word spectacular and the Spanish word espectacular. A native Spanish speaker may conscientiously hypercorrect for the word escape by writing or saying scape, or for the word establish by writing or saying stablish, which is archaic, or an informal pronunciation in some dialects. When learning English, German speakers often have trouble pronouncing [w] since the phoneme [w] is absent from German. The letter <w> also makes the [v] sound in German. After German speakers master the pronunciation of [w], some of them hypercorrect to incorrectly pronounce the [v] phoneme in English as [w] without realizing it.
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