Valley girl

For other uses, see Valley girl (disambiguation).

Valley girl is a socio-economic stereotype depicting a class of women characterized by the colloquial California English dialect Valleyspeak and vapid materialism.

The label originally referred to a swell of upper-middle class girls living in the early 1980s Los Angeles commuter towns of the San Fernando Valley, but in time the term became more broadly applied to any woman or girl -- primarily in the United States and Canada -- who engendered the associated affects of ditziness, airheadedness, and/or greater interest in conspicuous consumption than intellectual or personal accomplishment.[1]

Sociolect

A sociolect associated with valley girls termed "Valleyspeak" arose in the San Fernando valley in the 1980s. Qualifiers such as "like", "whatever", "way", "as if!", "super", "totally" and "tubular" (a surfing term) are interjected in the middle of phrases and sentences as emphasizers. Narrative sentences were often spoken as if questions using a high rising terminal. Heavily accented words were spoken with high variation in pitch combined with very open or nasal vowel sounds.

In popular culture

The height of the "Valley Girl" period was during 1982-83, with several films, shows and music of the New Wave era embodying the "Valley" atmosphere of the San Fernando Valley during that time.

In 1982, composer Frank Zappa released the single "Valley Girl", with his 14-year-old daughter Moon Unit speaking typical "Valley Girl" phrases. Zappa intended to lampoon the image, but after the song's release there was a significant increase in the "Valspeak" slang usage, whether ironically spoken or not.[2]

The 1982-83 CBS TV show Square Pegs featured Tracy Nelson playing Jennifer DeNuccio, a popular Valley Girl at the high school.

The 1983 film Valley Girl starring Nicolas Cage centered on a group of "Valley Girl" characters and featured several characterizations associated with their lifestyle (such as going shopping at the mall or "Galleria," suntanning at the beach, and going to parties).

Comedian Liam Kyle Sullivan's character Kelly, a blonde teenage girl obsessed with fashion and self-image, speaks with an over-the-top Valley Girl inflection.

The protagonist of the 1995 film Clueless has been described as a caricature of 1990s "Valley Girls," though she is actually from nearby Beverly Hills.[3][4][5][6]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Demarest, Michael; Stanley, Alessandra (September 27, 1982). "Living: How Toe-dully Max Is Their Valley:. Time magazine.
  2. ↑ Watson, Ben (1994). Frank Zappa: The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play. Quartet Books. p. 396. ISBN 978-0-7033-7066-2.
  3. ↑ "Amy Irving". The Index-Journal. April 22, 1998. Retrieved 8 April 2015.
  4. ↑ Alan Schwartz, Richard (2006). The 1990s. Infobase Publishing. Retrieved 8 April 2015.
  5. ↑ Rothman, Lily (22 October 2012). "No Rebuttals: The Top 10 Movie Debate Scenes". Time.com (Time). Retrieved 8 April 2015.
  6. ↑ Hoffman, Jan (23 December 2013). "Overturning the Myth of Valley Girl Speak". NYTimes.com (New York Times). Retrieved 8 April 2015.

External links

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