Bruce's posting on dialect, dialect-switching, etc. is reminiscent of
William Labov's work in sociolinguistics. One other thing, people often
deny that they say what they say. For example, mothers will insist that
they pronounce 'can' with the same vowel as in 'hat,' but in normal
speech it is more like a nasalized version of the vowel in 'let.' (Not
all mothers -- this just comes from one of Labov's early studies.)
Another example is 'gonna.' As an ESL professional I sometimes enjoy
hearing people (teachers) say that they never say 'gonna' and that only
'going to' is correct. I rarely point it out to them when they later
say 'gonna' quite naturally.
Eileen Prince
eprince@lynx.dac.northeastern.edu