Hello from a newbie

[Jim McKee]

Hi everyone - I just joined the List yesterday hoping as an amateur to
keep up better with what official dialectologists are thinking and
saying!
The things I've noticed lately - admittedly off topic; forgive me! -
include an epidemic of speakers saying "The point is is that ...." or
even "The problem was is that...", and the EMT's heard on my local
police scanner saying, "Transporting one non-emergent."  The latter may
be regional - I am near Mississippi State University, but the former, I
hear mostly on the radio from all over.
Another thing that has intrigued me for years is that occasionally on a
TV cop or detective show someone will say "I consulted a linguist at the
University and he said that caller has a West Texas accent."
Similarly, in a book, a woman was identified by consultation with a
linguist as being Native American because a specific pronunciation
feature indicated a bilingual childhood environment, etc.  I'm just
wonderng if the writers of these TV shows and books really have existing
"linguists" in mind, and, if so, how they know which linguist at which
university to consult, since dialectology is often very specialized.
In any case, the use of "you guys" has definitely filtered down to my
part of the country, mostly age-group specific as you might imagine.

Jim