Collaborative Proposal: Dialect Evolution and Ongoing Variable Linguistic Input: Pacific Northwest English 200 Years After Lewis and Clark

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The Northwestern United States (including Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Utah) 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 development in this region of the United States. 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, 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 have Native-Americans, African-Americans, Scandinavians, Asians, East-coast Americans, and others shaped the speech of this region? The first phase of this project examines the way people talk in the Seattle metropolitan area. In-person speech data will be collected from Seattleites in 2 different neighborhoods (one historically established, the other populated by newcomers). In addition, a small sample of Seattle residents will be interviewed by telephone. These subjects will be native English-speaking residents of Seattle (not necessarily native Seattleites) and will be included in order to paint a picture of the range of dialects present in Seattle in general. In addition to these speakers, data will be collected from a small sample of African-American speakers from one long-established Seattle neighborhood in order to examine the role that ethnicity plays in influencing the English of the Pacific Northwest.