That’s what Sally got after too much riding… :dubious:
Aside from the Valley accent (listen to Lisa Kudrow sometime - she pretty much has a non-caricatured version), Californians basically sound like generalized Midwesterners. San Franciscans speak more Eastern, and Pacific Northwesterners have kind of a Great Lakes vowel sound.
I meant roid, Sally, roid.
I somewhat disagree about Californians. (With the state being – what, 800 miles long? – and with 30 million people, three large cities, lots of other cities that would be huge in other states, coastal regions, mountains, deserts, forests, and large, diverse agriculteral areas, one really can’t be definitive.) There’s something about a generalised Midwestern accent that sounds different to me. A little more broad? A little more folksy? A little more nasal on the short-'A’s? I don’t know. But I can hear something different.
I did notice a Great Lakes vowel sound in the PNW, but much softer. Ex-fiancée lived in Washington for many years, and she still has that ‘O’ sound – which sounds interesting since she’s picking up a Tennessee accent.
Spoon, Bosda . Spoon.
How do you expect us to understand you, if you don’t speak the language properly? 
turns on Pink Floyd’s The Wall… Not that I detect…
Pronunciation is dialect, not accent.
Everyone has an accent except those who grew up in a small region in the approximate center of Cherokee County, IA. 
Playing some Split Enz via the iTunes music store, I’m going to have to vote for pronunciation not accent, as well.
Is there any church music? Something non-rock?
How is pronunciation not a part of accent?
Count me also among the flabbergasted. I really don’t understand how anyone could think that.
A linguistics class I took as an undergrad discussed this. The conclusion we reached was that the West Coast doesn’t have much of an accent, but it does have a distinctive speech rhythm, as Jonathan Chance noted above. Pronunciation is accent, pretty much bydefinition.
Agreed. As nearly as I can determine, dialect and accent are almost identical. Maybe accent is better used when referring to someone who is speaking a language other than his native tongue and dialect refers more to variation in pronunciation, word choice and syntax within a language. But both include pronunciation.
Linguistically, accent refers to differences in pronunciations between groups. Maybe that’s why people are confused: you’re not using the term as it would typically be defined.
Dialect may include accents, but also includes grammar, vocabulary, and usage differences.
In parts of the old South, “Take care now.” on parting was used between people like friends and family who were concerned with the other’s general welfbeing. In the movie In The Heat of The Night red-necked sheriff Bill Gillespie can hardly tolerate the presence of black, big-city detective Virgil Tibbs. However as the movie progresses the sheriff and detective work together, although with a lot of friction, to solve a crime. At the end when Tibbs boards the train to return to Philadelphia, Gillespie sees him off, hesitates a while and then says, “You take care now, heah?” and he spoke the dialect phrase in a southern accent.
I am guessing you are from the West Coast. Oh, hey, look at your location!
People from everywhere conclude that they “don’t have much of an accent.” Just last year a friend of ours with a really distinct rural Ontario accent was commenting that she didn’t have an accent. She was speaking with a strong, dictinct accent as she said it. (For fun, oif you ever meet an Ontarian who claims they don’t have an accent, ask them to read a sentence with the word “During” and then ask them where the J came from.)
Yes, you do have an accent. A very distinct one. (On the other hand, it is NOT the same as the Midwestern accent.)
Yes, but the class was at the University of Alaska. Make of that what you will.
For you reading pleasure, the Wikipedia article on Accent (linguistics).
—Why do you talk like Englishmen and sing like Americans?
—It sells better.
(Beatles 1964)
BrainWreck, I’d hazard that British bands sing in American accents largely because Rock’n’Roll came from America originally, so the first British groups were emulating their American heroes, and the habit stuck. There are a few British pop artists who sing/sung in British accents - Marc Bolan, David Bowie (sometimes), Oasis, The Streets, Nick Drake, Franz Ferdinand. I might also hypothesize that the American accent lends itself a little better to fluidity, as English accents in particular can be a bit staccato.
Anyway, thanks to those who have pointed out the elephant in the living room of this thread.
Of course the OP’s region “has an accent”. It’s called an American accent.
The only people in the English-speaking world who don’t have an accent are the English, becoz we speek proper.
Seriously, though, SageRat, how do you define “accent” if it doesn’t relate to pronunciation?
I have wondered the same thing although I am not from the West Coast. I won’t say that people from the West Coast don’t have any accent, it is just muted. This occurs in many areas of the U.S. however.
I offer two other pieces of evidence:
Many people are well aware that they have an accent. I grew up in in the Deep South and we were all aware that our accents were strong. Boston people with the accent know it and people from the Bronx know they have one as well. However, even people with these strong accents will acknowledge that different version of generic American accents are not the same class as their own accents.
The typical American accent exists all over the U.S. in various size pockets. You will find it the common accent at virtually any national university. It seems to be an averaging effect of sorts when you combine many distinct accents and softens all of them rather than combines them. I grew up with a Deep Southern accent. I then moved to New Orleans and then to the Boston area. All of these places have notorious accents of their own. Proponents of of the “all accents are equal” theory would seem to suggest that I would develop an accent that combines Southern, New Orleans, and Boston elements (that is about the worst possible combination I would think). Instead, I now have no distinctive traits of any of those speech patterns and people cannot identify even the region I am from. You will see this with most people that move around a lot. Instead of combining traits, they all seem to fade. That would seem to support the OP’s idea.