And while the speech patterns are often used to indicate a certain, shall we say "ditziness" (or insecurity), Ritchart and her colleague, Amalia Arvaniti, argue that the use of uptalk is actually quite nuanced in terms of how it is used to communicate meaning, based on their acoustical analysis of the vocal stylings of 23 UCSD undergraduates. Tweak the specific jargon just a tad and you'd have your typical Southern Californian student, circa 2013. Here is a classic example from the 1995 film Clueless (a re-imagining of the classic Jane Austen novel, Emma), in which our heroine, Cher, is giving a presentation in her high school debate class: It's the nature of language to continually evolve, and each teen generation has its own preferred slang, but at least in SoCal, uptalk has become a mainstay ("like" and "totally" have shown remarkable staying power, too). That's the conclusion of Amanda Ritchart, a graduate student in linguistics at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), who reported on the results from her new study investigating the prevalence of uptalk (or "high rise terminals" in linguistic jargon) among Southern California young people at the annual fall meeting of the Acoustical Society of America this past week in San Francisco. There are now Valley Boys as well as Valley Girls, if the frequent use of uptalk is your metric.
Unlike most pop culture fads, which tend to die out pretty quickly - it's no easy feat to " make fetch happen" - Val-speak didn't die out it spread, all over Southern California and across socioeconomic, ethnic, and gender boundaries. Soon everyone was walking around declaring their school lunches were "grody to the max," I mean, "gag me with a spoon," every uptalking utterance punctuated by frequent insertions of "like" and "totally." Turn on any news channel and wait for an anchor or guest talking heads to say any of these phrases.But I live like in a really good part of Encino so it's okay.įrank Zappa's quirky Top 40 hit from 1982, "Valley Girl," doesn't get much radio airplay these days, even on the "nostalgia" stations, but it captured the birth of a linguistic phenomenon in the running commentary provided by his daughter, Moon Unit - "val-speak," a strange dialect spoken by the female denizens of the San Fernando valley area in Southern California characterized by ending sentences with a slight rise in pitch, as if asking a question, now known as " uptalk." And it might have stayed in the Valley, too, if it weren't for that meddling musician and his daughter, who broadcast it to the masses. If I hear you say it, I will call you on it. Now, our twice-yearly plea to the masses: PLEASE stop using the following cliches:īe that as it may (should only be spoken by a mustachioed gentlemen wearing a monocle) What will you do to get this information, pay – or - find it elsewhere online for free? It is a tough world here “online.” INSIDE RADIO By the way, INSIDE RADIO is one of many online information services instituting a pay wall. TuneIn alleges Pandora “did not invest the resources and effort necessary to make the Network a successful sales platform” and points to “dismal sales” as proof. Tune-In is suing Pandora due to the failure of Pandora to deliver on an advertising contract involving Pandora’s “revolutionary”, “game-changing” new platform called Harmonic Audio Network which they claimed would improve ad placements to better align with brand values and improve listener engagement. The online audio companies are going through merger-growth spurts and legal battles.
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