In this work in progress seminar, arranged by the English research seminar, Joe Trotta and Monika Mondor present their ongoing research. All interested are welcome!
In this work in progress presentation, Joe Trotta discusses three so-called ‘nonstandard’ English constructions: the use of past tense forms (or -ed forms) instead of past participle forms (or -en forms) as show in (1); the contraction of I am going to to I’ma, shown in (2); and the invariant don’t as in (3):
When noted in the literature, these nonstandard forms are commonly discussed as being features of a few specific varieties of English, primarily African American Vernacular English (AAVE) or as some variant of Southern US White English (SWE). Additionally, many documented examples are evidenced in mediatized language from Popular Culture (note that the examples above are all taken from Pop lyrics). In the present study, we look beyond the common explanations and instead examine these uses through a systemic corpus study. Our aim is to shed some critical light on what factors are connected to these nonstandard variants as regards textual and situational variables such as text-type, genre, medium, as well as whatever sociolinguistic variables (e.g. gender, ethnicity, age, etc.) may be relevant.