Labels such as “gangster -yo! Homie” and “lots of “ghetto” slang + gang talk” were compiled into a category called gangster. As shown in the map, those areas labeled as gangster are largely urban areas but also south eastern WA. Gangster was a category attributed to urban areas in the Bucholtz et al (2007) study of perceptions dialectology in CA. Gordon (2010) also found ghetto attributed to St. Louis in his survey of perceptions of English in Missouri. The gangster category may reflect an urban/rural divide which seems to be more salient to respondents who are surveyed about variation within their own state rather than varation across the country.

18/336 respondents indicate an area with a label relating to Canada, such as “Canadian accent”, “Canadians are rubbing off on these people”. It seems reasonable for respondents to believe that people on the border of Canada might be influenced by the English spoken by Canadians. Linguists have studied English along the border of the US and Canada (e.g. Chambers http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~chambers/changes.html), although not along the WA/Canada border.

The pronunciation category is comprised of labels that are specifically about how people pronounce things. Some labels are broad such as “Different pronunciation slight accent” or “Eastern word pronunciation” while others are more specific: “they say their “e” like “i” Ex. Winatchee” or “put a “r” in their words Ex. Warshington”. This range of types of labels reflects the ability of non-linguists to provide “global” and “specific” details about language as described by Niedzielski and Preston (2003:23). The map shows that the areas most frequently labeled with a pronunciation label are in eastern WA. Because the majority of the labels in this category signal deviation form a standard pronunciation, this category and it’s clear association with eastern WA demonstrate that eastern WA is salient for being non-standard. Bellingham was indicated several times with a label from the pronunciation category, however, no clear pattern emerged from the set of labels given by respondents.

This map shows what regions were associated with the label Slang. Seattle, Tacoma, Spokane and Yakima were most frequently labeled as slang. It appears that slang is largely an urban phenomenon for these respondents as the rural regions were only labeled as slang by a few respondents. This label presents some difficulty for interpretation because, for non-linguists, slang can mean many different things (Niedszielski and Preston 2003). Generally, it very likely refers to anything non-standard. In addition, the affective attribution can be positive in the sense of popular or status-conferring and also negative in the sense of out-group (e.g. age, ethnicity) usage (Wolfram & Schilling-Estes 1998).

This map shows what regions were associated with the label Spanish. The second largest category of labels is Spanish (40/336). These labels reflect respondents’ awareness of the Latino population in the region.

This map shows what regions were associated with the label country, the most frequent category label (86/336 or 25% of the labels). This category was most frequently associated with regions in eastern WA. A combination linguistic, geographic and cultural features of eastern WA create and perpetuate an aura of ‘country’ therefore helping make this region salient to Washingtonians as ‘country’.