Oregonian Perceptions of American Regional Speech

Although much is known about the varieties of American speech from a linguistic standpoint, less work has been done which examines folklinguistic attitudes and beliefs about those varieties. Perceptual dialectology studies have been done in several areas of the United States; however, no research to date has examined the perceptions of west-coast residents. In this study, the attitudes of Oregon residents towards American speech are examined through the use of hand-drawn maps and ratings of degree of difference, correctness, and pleasantness. The results of the ratings data are analyzed primarily using Chi-Square Tests of Independence, Multi-Dimensional Scaling, and K-Means Cluster Analysis. Results of the study indicate that overall, residents of Oregon exhibit a good deal of linguistic security. They tend to agree, in general, with the perceptual dialectology of respondents from other geographical areas, although there are a few noticeable differences in their ratings