Editing Between you and I (section)

===Hypercorrection, contextual acceptability===
More complex explanations than "trauma" or "unease" are provided by linguists and sociolinguists. Without expanding on the topic, Henry Hitchings considers the phrase a very specific, class-oriented kind of hypercorrection, which he calls "hyperurbanism", which "involves avoiding what is believed to be a 'low' mistake and using a supposedly classier word or pronunciation, although in fact the result is nothing of the sort".<ref name="Hitchings"/> A similar reason is given by Bryan Garner (''pace'' Chambers), who says "this grammatical error is committed almost exclusively by educated speakers trying a little too hard to sound refined but stumbling badly", and says the phrase is "appallingly common".<ref name="Garner">{{cite book|last=Garner|first=Bryan|authorlink=Bryan A. Garner|title=Garner's Modern English Usage |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2xv4CwAAQBAJ&pg=PA111 |year=2016|publisher=Oxford UP|isbn=9780190491505|pages=111–112}}</ref> The notion that educated people are prone to this error is shared by Grammar Girl, who says that [[Jessica Simpson]] can therefore be forgiven (for the 2006 song "Between You and I").<ref>{{cite book|last=Fogarty|first=Mignon|authorlink=Mignon Fogarty|title=The Grammar Devotional: Daily Tips for Successful Writing from Grammar Girl|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gDUMufuiqjAC&pg=PA20|year=2009|publisher=Holt|isbn=9781429964401|page=20}}</ref> According to legal scholar [[Patricia J. Williams]], however, members of "the real upper class" recognize it immediately as substandard; she comments that such usage easily marks one as belonging to a lower class.<ref>{{cite book|last=Touré|authorlink=Touré (journalist)|title=Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness?: What It Means to Be Black Now|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=n_tWdNU-xyQC&pg=PA185|year=2011|publisher=Simon and Schuster|isbn=9781439177570|page=185}}</ref> Sociolinguist [[Gerard van Herk]] discusses "between you and I" and similar phrases with pronoun errors (which are all incorrect according to [[Linguistic prescription|prescriptive linguists]]) in the context of [[social mobility]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Herk|first=Gerard Van|authorlink=Gerard van Herk|title=What Is Sociolinguistics|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=X5mqoBAluX0C&pg=PA54|year=2012|publisher=Wiley|isbn=9781405193191|page=54}}</ref>

One of the most notable linguists to accept the grammaticality of "between you and I" is [[Steven Pinker]], even though he still calls it a "hyper-corrected solecism". Pinker's argument, in short, is that [[Coordination (linguistics)|individual elements in coordinates]] need not have the same number as the coordinate itself: "she and Jennifer are" has two singular coordinates, though the coordination itself is plural. The same, Pinker argues in ''[[The Language Instinct]]'' (1994), applies to case, citing a famous phrase used by [[Bill Clinton]] and criticized by [[William Safire]]: "So just because [Al Gore and I] is an object that requires object case, it does not mean that [I] is an object that requires object case. By the logic of grammar, the pronoun is free to have any case it wants".<ref name=puss>{{cite news|url=https://newrepublic.com/article/77732/grammar-puss-steven-pinker-language-william-safire|title=Grammar Puss |last=Pinker |first=Steven |accessdate=24 March 2018 |newspaper=[[The New Republic]] |date=24 January 1994}}</ref> Writer [[Ben Yagoda]], impressed by this argument, divides his thinking on the phrase's grammaticality in a pre-Pinker and a post-Pinker period,<ref name="Yagoda">{{cite book|last=Yagoda|first=Ben|authorlink=Ben Yagoda|title=You Need to Read This: The Death of the Imperative Mode, the Rise of the American Glottal Stop, the Bizarre Popularity of "Amongst," and Other Cuckoo Things That Have Happened to the English Language|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RfHJAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT58|year=2014|publisher=Penguin|isbn=9780698157828|page=58}}</ref> and Peter Brodie, in a special issue of ''[[The English Journal]]'' devoted to grammar and usage, is likewise persuaded: "he also reminds us that these rules are generally dictated by snobbery and conceived as mere shibboleths".<ref name="Brodie">{{cite journal|last=Brodie|first=Peter|year=1996|title=Never Say NEVER: Teaching Grammar and Usage|journal=[[The English Journal]]|volume=85|issue=7|pages=77–78|doi=10.2307/820514|jstor=820514}}</ref> While David D. Mulroy, in ''The War Against Grammar'' (2003), finds Pinker's argument not entirely persuasive, he says "these are matters on which reasonable people can disagree".<ref>{{cite book|last=Mulroy|first=David D.|title=The war against grammar|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=d_XtAAAAMAAJ|year=2003|publisher=Boynton/Cook|isbn=9780867095517}}</ref>

According to linguist [[Joshua Fishman]] the phrase is, in some circles, "considered to be perfectly OK even in print", while others accept it "only in some contexts", and yet others never accept it at all.<ref name="Fishman">{{cite book|last=Fishman|first=Joshua A.|authorlink=Joshua Fishman|title=European Vernacular Literacy|date=28 June 2010|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3VdWq-ZGv-UC&pg=PA1|publisher=Multilingual Matters|isbn=9781847694782|page=1}}</ref> Richard Redfern cites many examples of what is considered incorrect pronoun usage, many of which do not follow the "preposition + you and I" construction: "for he and I", "between he and Mr. Bittman". He argues that the "error" is widespread ([[Elizabeth II]] even committing it), and that it should become acceptable usage: "The rule asks native speakers of English to stifle their instinctive way of expressing themselves".<ref>{{cite journal|last=Redfern|first=Richard K.|year=1996|title=Pronouns Are Highly Personal|journal=[[The English Journal]]|volume=85|issue=7|pages=80–81|doi=10.2307/820515|jstor=820515}}</ref>

In its treatment of "coordinate nominatives" used where the accusative (oblique) case would be used in non-coordinate constructions, ''[[The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language]]'' differentiates different levels of acceptance, depending on the pronouns used and their position in the coordinate construction. Thus, a construction like "without you or I  knowing anything about it" is "so common in speech and used by so broad a range of speakers that it has to be recognised as a variety of Standard English", while examples like "they've awarded he and his brother certificates of merit" and "... return the key to you or she" are classified as grammatically incorrect hypercorrection.<ref name="Huddleston CGEL">{{Cite book|page=463|last1=Huddleston |first1=Rodney |authorlink1=Rodney Huddleston
|last2= Pullum |first2= Geoffrey |authorlink2=Geoffrey Pullum
|title=The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language |date=2002 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge; New York |isbn=0-521-43146-8}}
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