It’s nonsense, to put it simply. “Aren’t” means “are not”, so you’d have said “I’m a Doper, are not I?”. Even if you’d ‘fixed’ it, it would transform to “I’m a Doper, are I not?”, something that’s not an improvement.
You want the ‘am’ form of ‘to be’, and the only way to get that in convenient (contracted) form without making people’s eyes cross is to use ain’t. Pure and simple.
well according to The Columbia guide to standard english http://www.bartleby.com/68/56/256.html “aren’t I” is perfectly acceptable, though I agree the expanded form isn’t.
scm1001, those are the contortions you force your language into when you begin to arbitrarily decide certain words aren’t ‘good enough’ for you. “Aren’t” isn’t the correct word for that sentence based on all of the surrounding rules of English grammar, and making a special case simply to obviate the obvious need for “ain’t” is absurd.
Derleth,
dont argue with me. Go and tell Kenneth G. Wilson in “The Columbia Guide to Standard American English”, (1993). He obviously needs your input. Also argue with the 100,000 webpages with the phrase “aren’t I” in them (Google).
English does not have to be logical or have to fit your preconceptions. It just is. “Ain’t I” is for unjustified reasons considered low english, “aren’t I” is “considered” more correct though logically it shouldn’t be. Go figure.
It also suffers from some people’s inexplicable desire to write it as “ya’,ll.” I will never understand that.
Also, I will never understand how “aren’t I” can be considered any less grating to the ear than “ain’t I.”
Also also – and Chronos has commented on this* – I don’t think it is strictly possible to split an infinitive; most authorities hold, reasonably enough, that the word “to” is not part of the infinitive form of a verb. For a good discussion of the whole issue, see here.
Also also also, don’t get me started on the whole “never end a sentence with a preposition” idiocy.
A moose once bit my sister.
RR
*Note that the word “this” has no clear antecedent. So sue me.