When I'm writing Regency-era things, I try to find a balance between dialogue as Austen would have written it and dialogue as a 21st-century reader expects to read it. It's a challenge!
I find that expanding a contraction allows for more nuanced emphasis, which I enjoy. "I'm going to the store" is unlikely to be read as anything other than a simple statement. "I am going to the store" is so much more sensitive to the context and the speaker's tone of voice: "I, and not you, am going to the store"; "I am in fact going to the store". And that opens the door to more subtle stresses on "going" or "the store", until there's a wealth of subtext packed in under six very plain words. I can see the appeal to Regency-era speakers, who cared so much about subtext and nuance and what's being said under what's being said.
no subject
I find that expanding a contraction allows for more nuanced emphasis, which I enjoy. "I'm going to the store" is unlikely to be read as anything other than a simple statement. "I am going to the store" is so much more sensitive to the context and the speaker's tone of voice: "I, and not you, am going to the store"; "I am in fact going to the store". And that opens the door to more subtle stresses on "going" or "the store", until there's a wealth of subtext packed in under six very plain words. I can see the appeal to Regency-era speakers, who cared so much about subtext and nuance and what's being said under what's being said.