0971 – Valley Speak

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2023.08.29 – 0971 – Valley Speak

Valley speak (short for ‘Valley Girl-speak’)[1]’[2]

Symptom: This is a combination of several vocal features (nasality, uptalk, fast-paced run-on sentences, breathiness and vocal fry) and vocabulary (“like”, “I know, right?”, “whatever”, “totally”) Episode 638 discusses the use of the word “like” and 640 is on other ‘filler words’.

Prescription: Such a style may be appropriate (although a little dated) for an audience of millennials, but if that’s not you then it’s probably best to avoid this style and adopt one that is considered more mature for most of your reads.

[1] The ‘Valley Girl’ dialect was originally associated with materialistic upper-middle-class young woman of the San Fernando Valley in California, and a way of speaking that became familiar across the English-speaking world. It came to be associated with being ditzy and spoken by those with a greater interest in material items than intellectual or personal accomplishment.

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZL6XBB-umc0&feature=youtu.be

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