Valspeak

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The slangy, exaggerated speech style associated with affluent young women from California's San Fernando Valley in the 1980s
2. A colloquial dialect marked by words like totally and like, once popularized as the speech of Southern California's suburban teenagers
3. Informal patter characteristic of teenage girls in the San Fernando Valley, noted for its upward intonation and filler phrases

Etymology: Valspeak is a playful blend of "Valley" and "speak", the way young Californians in the 1980s talked, and its story begins with a Hollywood sitcom. In 1982, the sitcom "Moonlighting" was not the source; instead, the term took off with the 1982 comedy "Valley Girl" and the Frank Zappa song of the same name, which made the valley accent famous across the country. The speech pattern it names was built from the San Fernando Valley, a suburban area of Los Angeles, where teenagers used rising intonation at the ends of statements, words like "like" and "totally" as fillers, and a set of exaggerated expressions. The word itself is a compound: "Valley" points to the place, and "speak" to the manner of talking, the same pattern that gives us words like "newspeak" and "doublespeak". Linguists have since treated the style as a regional sociolect rather than a joke, and many of its features spread far beyond the valley. The label stuck because it tied a way of talking to a particular place.

Synonyms: Valley girl speak, Valley speak