The Northwestern United States (including Washington state) is the product of a rich history of Native American, European, Asian, and other influences. The Pacific Northwest English (PNWE) project explores the extent of English dialect mixture and development in this region. The story of the Pacific Northwest is one of constant settlement and immigration. Although a few pockets of historically-isolated communities can be found, most Northwesterners live in places where their voices intermingle with people of different backgrounds.
Two hundred years after Lewis and Clark's historic voyage to the Pacific coast, researchers at the University of Washington ask: has the Northwest been established long enough to have unique dialect features? Has the history of ongoing settlement made it the truest of American melting-pots? How much has contact between Native-Americans, African-Americans, Mexican-Americans and Anglo-Americans shaped the speech of this region?
This project examines the way Washingtonians speak, and explores how listeners (from the PNW and elsewhere) react to PNWE speech. Speech data will be collected from Washington-born subjects in both rural and urban parts of the state. Data from three generations of speakers allows examination of the progression of change over time. This study employs quantitative Sociophonetic methods that allow measurement of the acoustic signal produced when we speak. Of particular interest are a set of sound changes that appear to be focused in PNWE, including one in which vowels such as appear in the words BEG and BAG are both shifting in this variety of English to rhyme with the vowel in BAKE. This type of change captures a subtle but important aspect of linguistic change. Though speakers in this region do not hear themselves producing these differences, such differences mark their speech, and are "big" enough differences to confuse listeners from other regions. This type of phenomenon is of interest to linguists, because it sheds light on how languages change, and on long it takes for language change to take place, all below the level of human consciousness.
The Broader Impacts are varied and strong. Student researchers will gain valuable experience in sociolinguistic fieldwork and the scientific analysis of language variation. The researchers will be drawn from a wide range of ethnic minorities, including native Americans, which have been underrepresented in linguistic research. There is considerable interest among the general community in the topic of varieties of English in the local area. Oral histories and sound clips from speakers from the region, as well as other data, will be included in a website freely available for public access.
