Although it was the focus of several publications by Carroll Reed in the 1950s and early 1960s, English spoken in the Pacific Northwestern United States (PNWE) has received minimal research attention in variationist sociolinguistics. This paper provides the first report from an ongoing sociophonetic study. Data from a single-ethnicity, 25-person subsample of the larger corpus, constituted to explore change in apparent time, clarifies Seattleites' use of key markers of Western speech, including merger of cot /a/ and caught /ɔ/, and the positions of all vowel phonemes in the system. Several heretofore unreported characteristic features are found, including a tendency for PNWE speakers to monophthongize /e:/ bake and to raise prevelar /æ/ bag and /ε/ beg toward /e:/.

A geometrical method for computing overlap between vowel distributions, the spectral overlap assessment metric (SOAM), is applied to an investigation of spectral (F1, F2) and temporal (duration) relations in three different types of systems: one claimed to exhibit primary quality (American English), one primary quantity (Jamaican Creole), and one about which no claims have been made (Jamaican English). Shapes, orientations, and proximities of pairs of vowel distributions involved in phonological oppositions are modeled using best-fit ellipses (in F1 x F2 space) and ellipsoids (F1 x F2 x duration). Overlap fractions computed for each pair suggest that spectral and temporal features interact differently in the three varieties and oppositions. Under a two-dimensional analysis, two of three American English oppositions show no overlap; the third shows partial overlap. All Jamaican Creole oppositions exhibit complete overlap when F1 and F2 alone are modeled, but no or partial overlap with incorporation of a factor for duration. Jamaican English three-dimensional overlap fractions resemble two-dimensional results for American English. A multidimensional analysis tool such as SOAM appears to provide a more objective basis for simultaneously investigating spectral and temporal relations within vowel systems. Normalization methods and the SOAM method are described in an extended appendix.

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Speakers from a semi-rural community within the Jamaican Creole continuum were asked what kind of linguistic entity they believe the Creole to be, where it is in use, whom they understand to be its users, and which domains they deem appropriate and inappropriate for its use. A language-attitude interview schedule yielding an Attitude Indicator Score (AIS) was developed for use in this community. This schedule contained two sets of questions, attitude and description questions, which were designed to capture information concerning overt and covert language attitudes. Results show respondents' attitude systems to be multi-valued: They were generally ambivalent in their attitudes toward Jamaican Creole, but they judged it appropriate or inappropriate for use in different contexts according to their social distance from or solidarity with an interlocutor. Gender grading and an age ϫ gender effect were found. (Language attitudes, Jamaica, creoles)* Recent discussion among both Jamaican scholars and laypeople suggests that Jamaicans' attitudes toward Jamaican Creole (hereafter JC) are changing. 1 This change, some suggest, has accompanied the increased popularity of Dancehall culture and nationalistic "consciousness raising" efforts (Christie 1995, Shields-Brodber 1997). 2 Concurrent with these revisionist efforts, there came a call in 1989 by the (Jamaican) National Association of Teachers of English (NATE) to validate JC in the schools. This event reflected movement at an institutional, policy-making level, while the rise of Dancehall operated at the level of popular culture. Such a shift in attitudes toward "things Jamaican" marks a significant conceptual reorientation, in light of the high esteem that historically has been given to British culture, and more recently on American culture. A history of low prestige It has been said that language is the theater for the enacting of the social, political, and cultural life of a people, as well as the embodiment of that drama (Alleyne 1993). After roughly 150 years of Spanish occupation, Jamaica came under British control in 1655. English became the language of prestige and power on the

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