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).
