I thought the Valley Girl thing was dead and gone. After the movie Clueless (an astonishingly good, if bizarre, rendition of Jane Austen’s Emma) had its run, and commentators had exhausted themselves venting over the injection of the word “like” in between every spoken word (I’m talking about the late 90s through, oh, say, 2007, rather than the Bohemian love of the word “like” in the 1950s), English seemed bored with the whole thing, and on the road to recovery. Sentences, it seemed, were beginning to return to a calmer state — less hysterical, less frenzied, less packed with filler words and meaningless inflections.
So it was with deep shock that I heard myself lift my voice at the end of a declarative sentence the other day. In class, no less! Professor Fendrich, who never went through the “like” phase, and for whom the word “like” is the least-favorite preposition, had stood in front of 20 students and said, without irony, “This part of the project is required?” As soon as I heard that lift at the end of the sentence, I thought, “Who said those words?” Perhaps the sky would fall. But nothing happened. No one giggled. No one even blinked.
I’ve been told that Terry Southern attributed the source of the Valley-Girl Lift at the end of sentences to southern women. Saying, “I’m from Dallas?” while stretching out the word “Dallas” and lifting the pitch helped the listener understand that part of being a woman included not being certain about one’s home town. In general, I find that turning declarative statements into questions reveals an unexplainable lack of confidence in one’s opinions and a radical uncertainty about one’s place in the world.
Earlier in the week, I listened to a couple of lectures given by colleagues, in their 30s or 40s, lift their voices on several occasions at the end of declarative sentences. They’re hardly alone. Not only do I hear that wretched, habitual lift at the end of declarative sentences in many of my students, and on the street, I hear it even from newscasters — especially, but not exclusively, from women. The Valley-Girl Lift is leeching from the speech of the young into the speech of the old.
Lifting the voice at the end of an English sentence is supposed to be an indication that you are asking a question for which you expect an answer. In Valley-Girl-speak, however, it signifies nothing other than that you are a Valley-Girl type — i.e., an empty-headed clotheshorse for whom the mall represents the height of culture. Although Valley-Girl “like” may finally be fading from speech patterns,” the Valley-Girl Lift is alive and well. As for me, if I hear myself do that wretched lift even one more time, I think I’ll give in and go shopping.
3 Responses to The Valley-Girl Lift
jffoster - March 12, 2010 at 4:01 pm
Well gag her with a spoon! Interested in knowing some readers might be that Anglo Welsh, i.e. the English dialects spoken in Wales, often have an intonation rise at the ends of declarative sentences. This derives from a pattern of Welsh intonation such that heavy stress is usually on the second from last, i.e. penultimate, syllable of a word but the higher intonation pitch is usually on the end, i.e. a [low,rising] stress-pitch contour. Doubt very much I do however that Anglo Welsh had any influence on teenage English yng Nghwm Ffernando Sant (in the Valley of San Fernando)! Turkish also has a slight rise in declarative sentence final position and a fall in interrogative sentence final positio — for a quite different reason. The stress and higher pitch always goes on the last syllable before an inherently unstressable morpheme and it happens that the interrogative suffix -mI is one of the inherently unstressable morphemes. So Geldin ‘You came’ with sentence final rise but Geldin mi? ‘Did you come?’ with sentence final drop.
nordicexpat - March 13, 2010 at 11:25 am
The Language Log just had a discussion about this issue. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2163Young women are often at the forefront of language change, so there isn’t anything usual about high rise terminals beginning with that age group before spreading to the general population. Since language change goes under the surface, it takes years before it is picked up and commented upon by the media, so it probably pre-dates Valley Girls. Indeed,Americans blame Valley Girls for its spread, Brits, Australians, and some Australians, the Irish. Any close examination of high rise terminals would find a range of functions it serves: stereotypes about young women lead people to say that high rise terminals signals insecurity or emptiheadiness, not an understanding of the function of intonation in English. And my favorite use of like is still Pat Robertson’s, “I really believe I’m hearing from the Lord it’s going to be like a blowout election in 2004.”
karlflores - November 30, 2010 at 2:48 pm
So, I did not know that. When I started searching for what it was called when people end a sentence with a question, that’s is basically what I typed in google. Fortunately, I found this article and the above 2 posts have helped me understand the possibility that for years I have discounted most information when given to me from any “valley girl” or for that matter “valley boy”. Are you not sure of what you are telling me? If not why are you ending with a question? Another “like” like that I would like further discussion on and explanation, if possible, that is related, is when someone tells you a fact but prefaces it with “kind of”. Well is it or isn’t it? Do you “kind of” like me, or do you “like” like me? I don’t get it. My current observation of the use of the word like is that “SO” is the new “like”. Like when someone tells you something and they are not sure if you are in agreement or understand what they are saying or for that matter don’t seem to know if they are finished with what they are saying they say “SOOOO”
“Like, I’m not sure you are kinda like coming for dinner? Sooooo…
I think it’s about being a progressive moderate, what say you?