Talking about talking: haphazard hypercorrection

We all know that the way we speak is just as important as what we say. Your speech can tell others a lot about you--like your age, gender, ethnicity, place of origin, socioeconomic status, and more. We all know, too, that different ways of speaking carry different levels of social prestige. In school, we're taught to write (for example) Standard American English, because it's the variety expected in professional white-collar life. Your ability to speak "correctly" (remember, "correctly" always means "following a standard"), with a newscaster's vaguely Midwestern accent, can give you an air of education, wealth, and authority.

We're all aware of these facts at some level, and most everybody has made a conscious effort at some point in their lives to use a standard form of language over a more natural nonstandard form. But what happens if you're not totally sure what the standard form is supposed to be? Let's imagine a scenario that might feel uncomfortably familiar (continued after the jump):