Scholars study talk ‘up out on the ranch’

POCATELLO, Idaho – An Idaho State University professor and a former graduate student are studying the unique linguistic traits of the state’s southeastern corner, hoping to learn more about why people talk like they do in the region bordered by Wyoming, Utah and Montana.

Sonja Launspach, an assistant professor of English, and adjunct English professor Janna Graham, who started the project while she was Launspach’s graduate student, say words such as “sluffing” – for laziness – and “jockey box” – for the automobile storage area more commonly known as the glove compartment – have insinuated themselves into the local jargon.

In addition, natives of the region who completed 429 surveys also came up with 94 different terms to describe adherents of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Idaho’s most-prevalent religion, commonly referred to as “the Mormons.”

Just why southeastern Idahoans have developed their subtle dialect isn’t clear, Launspach and Graham said. They surmise that it may have to do with their rural character and because many people from the British Isles settled here, in towns whose names include Aberdeen, Gwenford and McCammon. Brits and Americans, Launspach noted, are two peoples separated by a common language.

And the agricultural southeast’s vernacular in some ways parallels the folksy speech patterns that people tend to associate with America’s rural South, including a tendency to preface verbs with an “a” – as in “a-goin’,” “a-ridin’ ” or “a-talkin’,” they said.

“We were listening to people talk and we wondered, ‘Where did this come from?’ ” said Launspach. “There are speech patterns that mark you as regional, but people don’t realize it at all.”

Peculiarities such as the propensity to add the preposition “up” emerged during their work.

Graham said people often say they live “up around toward Pocatello,” not just “near Pocatello.” If somebody says they’re heading “up out on the ranch,” chances are they weren’t born far from the Pocatello-Idaho Falls-Preston area where such colloquialisms appear to have their provenance.

The ISU instructors have already presented their work-in-progress at several linguistics conferences, and they eventually hope to publish their findings. In addition, they’ve developed a new urban language survey for the region’s few population centers and are compiling a computer database of their findings.

While southern drawls and the Boston accent have been heavily documented, Launspach said Western dialects aren’t quite so easy to trace.

“It’s really hard to pinpoint the origin of features, especially in the West,” she said. “More words have come into the area rather than less.”