Cross-border effects of education on 'correct' speech

Prescriptively, speakers of English are expected to use the accusative to mark personal pronouns when they occur as objects of prepositions. This is a rule that is often breached in contemporary usage, especially when 1st person pronouns occur in conjoined object phrases, as when people say between you and I for between you and me. A sociolinguistic survey of over 2,000 respondents (Chambers 1994) sheds light on the social factors that influence pronoun case variation of this kind. Across several regions, education proves to be a statistically significant social factor. Speakers with a university education are least likely to say between you and I. Real-time data suggests that education has had a long-time effect on case marking. Gregg (1984) argues that use of the nominative case to mark object pronouns in such constructions is a result of hypercorrection. That is, due to the stigmatization of the use of me for I in subject position, speakers over-react by using I for me in object position. Is education correlated with variable case marking of all kinds or only with hypercorrection? That is, are less educated speakers more likely to use non-standard case in all environments or only in environments which accommodate hypercorrection? The same sociolinguistic survey also provides data for conjoined subject choices such as (1) Me and Tom, (2) Tom and I, or (3) Tom and me. Education plays a significant role in case marking only in hypercorrectable constructions. In other constructions, education level is not a factor in choosing between standard and non-standard forms. However, those with less education are significantly more likely to hypercorrect case marking on conjoined 1st person objects