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Valspeak is a common name for the dialect used by valley girls, stereotypical dumb blondes, living in the San Fernando Valley, with rich parents, a superficial social life and a lot of attention for fashion and parties. This stereotype originated in the 1970s, but was at its peak in the 1980s and still popular in the 1990s. Though a fad, many phrases and elements of Valspeak, along with surfer slang and skateboarding slang, have become a permanent part of the California English dialect, and in some cases wider American English (such as the widespread use of "like" as conversational filler). The term "Valley Girl" and the Valley manner of speech was given a wider circulation with the release of a hit single by Frank Zappa entitled "Valley Girl," on which Moon Unit Zappa, Frank's fourteen-year-old daughter, delivered a monologue of meaningless phrases in "valspeak" behind the music. This song, Frank Zappa's only Top 40 hit in the United States, popularized phrases such as "grody to the max." Some of the terms used by Moon were not actually Valley phrases, but were surfer terms instead (such as "tubular" and "gnarly"). But due to the song's popularity, some of the surfer phrases actually entered the speech of real Valley teens after this point. The Los Angeles surfing subculture, on the other hand, did not generally begin using the Valley terms. Valspeak is used heavily in the 1995 film Clueless and quite a lot in Wayne's World.
Intonation Emphasizing phrases "totally", "so totally" "like" "why" "duh!" "As if!" "What-ever!" "Worst (something) ever!" (Now a Simpsons catchphrase. This phrase is also from 1337.)_ "so", "like", "OK", "you know", "or something" (Also see Vocabulary below.) Other characteristics The dialect can often be distinguished by its intonation, and by its pharyngealisation of certain consonant sounds, particularly the "L" and rhotic "R" sounds occurring in the coda. Pharyngealisation is rare in the English language and its presence here is possibly unique within American English, though it is detectable in similar circumstances in some variants of Irish English and Scottish English. Vocabulary See also | ||||||||
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