A new study, spearheaded by a BYU linguistics professor, explains why Utahns talk the way they do.

Wendy Baker, a linguistics and English language professor, recruited three student researchers to find out what factors influence a person’s acquisition of Utah’s local dialect.

Baker’s research focused on how and when a person adopts the local lingo. Such as the timeless lexical question: Is a carbonated soft drink “pop” or “soda”?

Baker said that while there have been many studies done on the dialects in the eastern United States, not very many have been done for the western states.

“This study will help us understand how dialects are acquired here,” Baker said.

The researchers found that religion—more specifically, membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—plays a key role in when and if a person acquires Utah’s unique dialect because of the different social circles members and non-members move in.

Whether a person was born and raised in Utah or if the person moved to the state later in life was another factor taken into consideration.

The findings will be organized into three articles to be published later this year in linguistic journals.

With funding from a mentoring grant, Baker and the student researchers began last May to survey 300 Utah County residents—from Spanish "Fark" all the way to the "carn" fields of Lehi—and then analyze the resulting data.

Daniel Sarver, 24, a senior from Liberty, Mo. majoring in linguistics, discovered contacting willing participants was not an easy undertaking.

“We started with the door-to-door approach,” Sarver said. “We had to convince people we were students and not salesmen.”

Willing participants were asked questions to determine if they pronounce various words in the local dialect, such as turning "milk" into "melk" and saying "Nevada" instead of "Nevahda."

“We had them answer questions [out loud] in order to get their pronunciations of words, but some of the speakers didn’t understand the questions,” Baker said. “Some of the speakers responded to the question ‘what color does red and yellow make?’ with ‘green’ or ‘pink.’ We had to finally ask them things like, ‘what color is a pumpkin?’ to get the right response—orange.”

Once the researchers obtained and analyzed the data, they presented their findings at the 33rd annual New Ways of Analyzing Variation conference last October at the University of Michigan. The conference is the largest and most prestigious in language variation studies, Baker said. William Labov, founder of the type of sociolinguistic research Baker conducted, was present at the conference and attended their presentation.

“I loved going to the [New Ways] conference in Michigan, presenting the data we had collected and then answering questions,” said Diane Argyle, 24, a senior from Renton, Wash. majoring in linguistics. “It gave me an opportunity to meet a lot of people in the linguistics field.”

Baker and the student researchers found many aspects of the mentored research worthwhile and beneficial. BYU’s Mentoring Environment Grants allow faculty to work closely with students advancing both toward their academic and career pursuits.

“It was a great experience,” Baker said. “I learned a lot from [the students] and it made researching a lot more rewarding.”

Sarver says this specific study is beneficial to BYU students and faculty considering a Mentoring Environment Grant because it focuses interest in resources available in Utah.

“You don’t have to travel far away to do research,” Sarver said. “There is a lot to be done right here.”



Copyright Brigham Young University 18 Jan 2005