Though it may not be obvious in everyday interaction, natives of the Pacific Northwest do have a distinct accent.

Researchers at the UW are beginning a two-year study into the presence of a dialect in the Seattle area and the Pacific Northwest as a whole.

Linguists have generally combined the states west of the Mississippi into one essentially similar accent, believing the Northwest to be too young to have its own distinct dialect. New evidence, however, has suggested this may not be true.

Alicia Wassink, associate professor of linguistics at the UW, and Jeffrey Conn, assistant professor at Portland State University, are heading up the study.

A dialect is defined as a language that differs in pronunciation, grammar or vocabulary and often results from variations in class, geography and gender of the people who speak the original language.

The Pacific Northwest has undergone many linguistically important changes that researchers believe may have resulted in a unique dialect.

The study will focus on differences in the use and pronunciation of the English language of natives to the Seattle area in comparison to the rest of the United States.

“Because there has been little investigation, we are open to whatever we find,” Conn said. “Knowing what we do know about other dialects, we can compare what we do find to those and see what features Northwesterners share and what features are different.”

The researchers are looking for 24 speakers of American English living in the greater Seattle area, born and raised in the Northwest between 1900 and 1985.

The participants will take part in a tape-recorded interview, including reading from a list of words and reading a short story.

“What we want to be able to do is to place speakers from the Northwest into the landscape of American dialectology,” Conn said.

The study will be looking at the variations in the pronunciation of various vowel sounds such those in ‘boot’ and ‘boat’ as well as the lack of distinction between the sounds in ‘cot’ and ‘caught’ resulting in the two words seeming identical.

“The field has shifted from looking at different word choices which would distinguish dialects to pronunciation, specifically vowel pronunciation, which now distinguishes dialect areas,” Conn said.

Both Conn and Wassink have been involved with previous research into the features of the Northwestern accent.

This study is a continuation of many years of work, as well as a response to the lack of information concerning the Northwest with respect to dialectology and sociolinguistics.

The findings may also show if linguistic features can emerge in a community with a constant input of different languages and dialects.

Some feel the Northwest does have its own dialect.

“I’ve noticed some things, mostly differences in slang words and phrases,” junior Autumn Cutter said.

Others, however, don’t feel the Northwest has a unique dialect.

“I’ve never really noticed [a specific dialect],” said Rachel Sobel, a freshman from Michigan.

The Northwest also represents a unique picture of the evolution of dialect, and suggests the processes involved in the creation of linguistic varieties.

The researchers hope this study will lead to a larger project, which would collect more data from Seattle as well as incorporate Portland and eventually expand to other areas of Washington and Oregon.

“The first steps are to begin with a systematic and scientific investigation of the speech of those born and raised here,” Conn said. “We are still, even in 2007, at a very exploratory stage with respect to the linguistic varieties of English [in] the Pacific Northwest.”

[Reach contributing writer Lauren Bond at news@thedaily.washington.edu.]