There are some deeply held beliefs in Southern California. We judge travel by time rather than distance, In-N-Out is a must, and some locals place a lot of importance on the Valley Girl accent.

The accent evolved from a simple symbol of place to a stereotypical white girl phenomenon.

It is a dictionary entry. A film, double. A stereotypical population group. All under the guise of the “Valley Girl”.

The roots of the “Valley Girl”

My interest in the origins of the Valley Girls began with a conversation with a stranger at the entrance to a concert. The people around us spoke with that familiar rising inflection and creaky voice.

“You know, the accent is from Hawaii,” he claimed.

This statement got me thinking. What do I actually know about the accent and how it came about? I started to dig deeper.

(As for Hawaii, my later interviews with linguists showed that there is little truth in this. But dear reader, if you know of evidence to the contrary, send it to me!)

Before the ’80s, being called a “Valley Girl” usually meant that you were from a valley. Which valley? Basically any in California. When a woman from Woodland Hills won an award, the headlines often said something like, “Valley Girl Wins Big.” The same goes for women from the Santa Clarita Valley, and so on.

But things changed fundamentally in 1982 when musician Frank Zappa released his best-selling single of all time, the Nominated for a Grammy Award Song “Valley Girl.” In it, his 14-year-old daughter Moon Unit Zappa improvised lyrics inspired by the teenage girls she grew up with in the San Fernando Valley.

“Encino is so cool,” Moon said with a lot of ascension in her voice. She sang about shoe shops in the Galleria, miniskirts and repeated teenage slang that would make today’s Generation Alpha say “puke me out”. Her improvised lyrics were a merger of things she heard and saw as a teenager.

It is not the only reason for the popularity of the term, but Zappa’s song gets a lot of recognition. (Incidentally, there was a reaction to this song called “Marina Men.”)

Sometimes called Val Girls and ValspeakThere have even been books published about how to avoid that particular Valley Girl sound.

But Zappa’s enthusiasm helped it become popular. Reseda even hosted a Valley Girl Competition this year. Ironically, the winner was from La Verne in the San Gabriel Valley, and one judge officially said, “The girls from the Valley come from everywhere.”

He was probably on to something. Although the accent is associated with Southern California, Teresa Pratt, assistant professor of linguistics at San Francisco State University, says the term is used elsewhere, too.

“They can’t even name the actual valley,” Pratt said, “but they know it’s roughly somewhere near LA” (And yes. Pratt has a bit of a Valley Girl accent, in case you were wondering).

“Nobody thinks about geography,” they added. “That’s how language works, right? You name something and then it takes on a life of its own.”

How did it start?

Pretty much all linguists agree on one thing: nobody knows for sure. (Or should that be “for sure”?) New language patterns emerge unpredictably, and it can be difficult to figure out how and why. People may notice a particular way of speaking for the first time before it even emerged.

For example, when it comes to “uptalk” – the rising emphasis at the end of a sentence associated with “Valley Girl” – no one can say in which country it originated, although Theories abound.

(It’s been linked to the speaker’s insecurity, or even to our dwindling attention spans. As in, “If I ask that question, will you look away from your phone?” In Britain, the blame has now been laid at the feet of a popular Australian soap opera that has sparked a conversation about Australia’s antipodes on British television.)

The same applies to the excessive use of “likes”.

What is known, however, is that we develop our accent as we grow up by absorbing the way the people around us speak. In a country as ethnically and culturally diverse as California, we are therefore sometimes influenced by multiple speaking styles.

The accent of some Californians, for example, can be traced back to Chicano EnglishLinguists also know that “Valley Girl” is strongly associated with the California vowel shift, in which vowels are pronounced in different parts of the mouth compared to other states.

Just watch Saturday Night Live famous sketches about “the Californians.” The skit is exaggerated, but there is a grain of truth in it. Pratt says the accent is common throughout the state.

The “Valley Girl” personality

Norma Mendoza-Denton, a professor of linguistic anthropology at UCLA, says the standard California accent, closely associated with “Valley Girl,” is often equated with whiteness. That’s understandable, considering the valley was originally inhabited by white families living in quietly segregated suburban communities.

Class and intelligence also play a role. While many different people speak like “valley girls,” the imaginary girl is a dumb girl with money to spend. Moon Zappa, after all, used the teenage slang she heard at the mall.

“Sometimes there is a stereotype that is so strong that it becomes ingrained in the consciousness of the general population,” Mendoza-Denton said.

Society has bought into the Valley Girl stereotype because it is an easy target for misogyny towards young women. Just look at the Valley Girl film or Cluelessand you will see female characters use a number of slang expressions in combination with certain clothing, but they are also portrayed as dim-witted and superficial.

The influence of the accent

A girl in 1982 may have brought us bad luck when she said that in six months no one would remember “Valley Girl”.

More than 40 years have passed since then and the trend still has a major impact on public perception.

Pratt says that while some things have been added to the idea of ​​the Valley Girl character, her social analysis hasn’t changed much.

“Now she has a Starbucks cup or something like that, which wasn’t the case 20, 30 years ago, but the core of her consumerism hasn’t changed,” they said. “It’s still superficial. It’s still meaningless. It still has no deeper meaning.”

It has modernized, so to speak. It’s less about Moon’s lavish mall trips and more about smoothie excursions at Erewhon.

But popularity also means not forgetting what actually makes up our home.

“It’s a bummer when LA is stereotyped as surfer guys and white girls,” says Tyanna Slobe, a linguistic anthropologist at Dartmouth College. “It erases the linguistic diversity in LA.”