As a Euro type I can tell it’s Southern, but more specifically?
P.s. Sorry, I didn’t look in the Lost thread to see if it came up because we are quite far behind the States so that thread is the forbidden land of spoilers to me.
I’m Canadian so I probably shouldn’t pretend to have a clue, but…
…I’m pretty sure it’s a “Hazzard County” accent. That is, a kind of fakey blend of what you’d expect to hear around Georgia, Kentucky, and the Carolinas – if your actual experience of the “Deep South” is San Diego.
(Now, no doubt, some helpful American will be along to say that it’s a dead-on reproduction of the local accent used by denizens of Athens, Alabama, east of Jefferson St, but west of the country club. :D)
According to the actor’s IMDB bio, he’s from Free Home, Georgia. He claims that his accent is the one he grew up with.
In an interview I read (in a doctor’s office - sorry, no cite), he said the character was originally written with a Jersey accent, but he decided to not even attempt it and go with his regular voice. Good choice, in my opinion.
As singular said, it is his real accent. His character was supposed to have a Jersey or Bronx accent but he didn’t even want to attempt it so he just used his natural voice and they loved it and loved him and rewrote the character for him. I think they say the character is from Tennessee or Louisiana.
Sawyer, the character, is from Knoxville, Tennesee, and I’d say (being from Nashville) that his accent is very much in line with a southern accent you’d hear from the region. It’s definitely not Louisianan or Alabaman which are very distinctive dialects.
Pookah, in general Americans don’t have/identify accents with anywhere near the specificity as in the UK and Ireland, where you can sometimes tell what town a guy is from by how he rounds his a’s. Our accents and dialects, in general, are not that pronounced or that variable, although there are some exceptions (the Bayou, Cape Cod, Lawn Guyland, e.g.). I don’t think Sawyer/Holloway could be identified by any U.S. layperson more specifically than “from the South, closer to the Atlantic than the Mississippi.” That covers a lot of area – most of Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, parts of central Tennessee, and parts of Northern Florida. And there are probably plenty of folks in Mississippi and even Louisiana who talk like that as well, although the majority in those areas will have the higher, tighter Southern accent you see further west. Population density is way less, I’m sure, but in terms of geographical area, that’s more space than the whole of the British Isles.
–Cliffy
Sawyer sounds a lot like Matthew McConaughey, and he is from Texas.
The Southern accent is fairly similar in most places.
I think only West Virginia and the cajun parts of Louisiana have VERY distinctive drawls.
Larry, you have a tin ear. East of the country club, certainly. Listen to his bilabial fricatives. 
I had a feeling that would happen.
I swan it sounds like a put-on to me. Maybe because he’s doing such a good job of “sarcastic and insincere” that I’m getting a general “fake” vibe from him?
I was pretty sure it was Tennessee but I believe his first flashback took place in Louisiana, so I wasn’t too sure if I was remembering correctly.
I’ve known people from LA and AL and I didn’t find their accents to be that distinctive, although I have heard plenty of cajun accents in the media that were distinctive. So either the cajun accents were exaggerated or people I knew lost the distinctive quality or they never had it because they weren’t from the area that has that quality.
Anyway, what does it matter? I spend more time watchin’ than listenin’. 
The more Metropolitan the area, the less severe the accent.
For example, people who live in Houston, TX have mild accents (trouble pronouncing the word “pie”) but people who live in rural communities in East Texas sound more like the traditional “Southern Accent” that EVERYONE uses in movies (Sawyer’s sounds a BIT more metro than rural. I don’t think it is that heavy.)
Maybe youre so used to phony TV accents that you can’t recognize a real one.
I used to live in Knoxville, Tennessee, and Sawyer’s accent sounds quite authentic to me. There are occasional exaggerated “Southernisms” in his speech, but real Southern men often exaggerate their own dialectical peculiarities, for effect. This is particularly common when Southern guys are talking to Yankee women. Come to think of it, we Southern gals may do some of this, too. I confess that I may turn up the “y’all” level if I feel flirtatious or whimsical.
Probably the latter. In some parts of Louisiana you get the Cajun accent. In other parts you get the more typical Southern accent (a la Sawyer). Varies according to the amount of French influence in the particular parish.
Cajun accents are definitely distinctive.
I agree with you that the Alabama accents I’ve heard don’t seem especially distinctive. So I’m not sure where Max Carnage is coming from on that one. Maybe he’s thinking of some specific accent from L.A. (Lower Alabama), say around Mobile?
I grew up in Mobile and I never found my accent to be stronger than other Southerners…
The Alabamans I know speak with a deep drawl. The relaxed drawn-out pronunciations of words, extra syllables (“Ah do de-clay-uh. Ah buhleev Ah hi-uv thu vay-puhs.”) At least in my experience. It irks me when an actor takes on that accent for a character not in the deep south.
But yes, Nawlins accents are much more distinct.
Sawyer’s accent is the same as Josh’s, so he is telling the truth about that. I heard him at Comic-Con, and his speech patterns and rhythms are the same. Generic Southern. I think the “metro” gloss comes from being in LA and having worked to lose it.
Having heard him do interviews, I don’t think he has the same accent in real life that he uses on the show. They’re both southern accents, but he seems to alter it somewhat when he’s in character.
Sounds Tennessee to me.