Name: Federica Country and Region: Italy Native Language: Italian Student or Teacher: Student Age or Grade: 22 Subject of Question: intonation Question: What is Valley Girl intonation? Where does the denomination come from?
The origin of the term "valley girl" is not attributable to any particular source, but the phrase gained widespread recognition in 1982, with the release of the Frank Zappa song/monologue "Valley Girl", which mocked the speech and attitudes of privileged teenage girls in southern California. The idiom took root in mainstream consciousness and today, elements of "Valspeak" are found in every corner of teenage American culture, regardless of geographic location. The concept of "Valley Girl" has therefore broadened to include any vacuous, materialistic young girl who uses a disproportionate amount of this type of speech.
The "Valley" referred to is the San Fernando Valley in southern California, which lies between the Santa Monica Mountains on the coast and the San Gabriel Mountains inland, and contains the north-west suburbs of Los Angeles, including North Hollywood, Encino, and Beverly Hills. These are fairly upscale neighborhoods, and therefore tend to produce the spoiled, bubble-headed kids that typify "Valley Girls".
Valley speech is defined more by the use of certain expressions with certain intonations, than by phonological changes. These characteristics are complex for a non-native speaker, so, rather than try to explain them in the abstract, let me simply direct you to this page: http://www.arf.ru/Notes/Ship/val.html, which analyzes the lyrics from the Zappa song and provides explanatory glosses for the various expressions. The best way to get a handle on the language is to obtain a copy of the song *cough*Napster*cough* and listen to it while reading along with the words.
There are also a few phonological characteristics associated with the accent (the spellings I am about to use are not authentic phonetic representations, but rather my own creative interpretation of how the words sound). In general, high back vowels shift to their corresponding rounded front vowels ("y'know" -> "y'knü"), low back unrounded vowels become rounded ("oh my God" -> "oh my Gawd"), and low front vowels become low unrounded back vowels ("hat" -> "hot", or in the song, "Andrea" -> "Ondrea").
-Chris Frost
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