Hasty, J. Daniel

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2011 - 20122
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  • Publication
    Finding Needles in the Right Haystack: Double Modals in Medical Consultations
    (2012-09-01) Hasty, J. Daniel; Hesson, Ashley; Wagner, Suzanne Evans; Lannon, Robert
    In this paper we present a case study of a syntactic sociolinguistic variable that has resisted previous attempts at quantitative analysis of usage, the double modal construction of Southern United States English (e.g., You know what might could help that is losing some weight). While naturally-occurring double modals have been exceedingly rare in sociolinguistic interviews, our study represents the very first corpus investigation of double modals through a search of the right ‘haystack’: the nationwide Verilogue, Inc database of recorded and transcribed physician-patient interactions (~85 million words). As a vast source of potentially face-threatening negotiations, the Verilogue corpus provides the ideal speech situation in which to search for low frequency, non-standard syntactic features like the double modal. A quantitative analysis of the 76 tokens extracted from doctor-patient consultations in the US South revealed that double modals are favored by doctors, especially women and those with many decades of professional experience. Among patients, those not currently in employment use double modals more frequently than the employed. We interpreted these findings with reference to the literature on the pragmatics of physician-patient talk, arguing that the double modal is used to negotiate the imbalanced power dynamic of a doctor-patient consultation. In general, the greater use of double modals by doctors shows that the construction is an active part of a doctor’s repertoire for mitigating directives. Collectively, we present a complex socio-pragmatic picture of double modal use that could not be seen without a corpus of naturally-occurring speech in a potentially face-threatening speech situation.
  • Publication
    I Might Not Would Say That: A Sociolinguistic Study of Double Modal Acceptance
    (2011-01-01) Hasty, J. Daniel
    While the double modal (e.g., I might could go to the store) is a well know feature of Southern United States English, most previous studies have focused mainly on explaining the double modal’s syntactic structure. With this focus on syntax these studies generally have used small and/or socially homogeneous samples; thus there we have little information about what social constraints might exist on double modal usage. Because the double modal is a relatively infrequently occurring syntactic form that does not alternate with another easily identifiable form, sociolinguistic methods of counting occurrences and non-occurrences in spontaneous speech are not adequate. In light of this, the present study utilized syntactic acceptability judgments to examine the effect of social factors on double modal acceptance in Northeast Tennessee. Age, gender, and educational level were found to significantly constrain respondents’ acceptance of double modal sentences. Age was the strongest predictor of acceptance with the youngest respondents the most accepting of double modal forms, followed by the oldest, and then the middle aged suggestive of possible age grading. Furthermore, men and respondents with less education were more likely to accept double modals than were women and respondents with more education; however, the gender and education effects hold only for the middle and old age groups. Thus, the young respondents are the most accepting and the most homogeneous group. This distribution supports a hypothesis that double modals are avoided by those who most value unmarked forms: adults in the prime years for employment. Planned future work including language attitude data will be beneficial in fully understanding the social distribution and perception of double modals.