Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin may be the VP candidate on the GOP ticket, but what especially interests a linguist like William Labov, author of the forthcoming Dialect Diversity in America: The Politics of Language Change, is the way the congressman pronounces a short “a” vowel. According to Labov, Congressman Ryan’s speech provides an example of the inland North accent, an offshoot of the larger Great Lakes accent and one that has evolved with unusual speed. Professor Labov examines the congressman’s speech in this Wall Street Journal piece.