Note that certain sorority girls were likely the first to consistently use “uptalk” for this purpose. Deborah Tannen is a researcher on this, and her publications are very accessible to non-specialists.
Valley Girl was set in The Galleria, but was filmed in Del Amo mall in Torrance.
Now Ahnold chasing David Patrick Kelly around the mall in Commando? That’s Sherman Oaks. Totally.
“All the speculation from people who are the wrong age and are hundreds of miles away” just means me saying San Bernardino once because I misremembered and then acknowledged the mistake. And I’m thousands of miles away, not mere hundreds. This is linguistically interesting, but California is pretty much a distant memory full of places named San Something. I barely know the shopping malls nearest me.
I must say, I did have to run a search to find out who “all these people” were, to only find it was you with a post that was quickly corrected. Talk about overstatement.
Totally
That’s what a lot of people don’t get. It was definitely an upper class, preppy affectation. Not all white girls from the Valley spoke like that. I grew up in Orange County, and found Valley speak more prevalent among the preppy girls in Newport Beach than I did among girls from the Valley that I met in Hollywood. The rich girls from the Valley weren’t really that into the Hollywood punk scene circa 1980.
It was cool that there was such a lively Punk scene behind the Orange Curtain. 
I lived less than a mile from The Cuckoo’s Nest.
Not AFAICT, no more than it “boded ill for speech and communications education” when the early 20th-century “prestige” American speaking style “Mid-Atlantic Accent” was displaced by the “less elite” style of “General American” after WWII.
Accepted standards for speaking styles change over time. Your great-grandfather, if he was an American English speaker, probably thought that announcers starting to use “General American” rather than “Mid-Atlantic” accent sounded too “folksy” or like “farm hands” or something.
Your grandchildren in decades to come will probably be amused by the fact that Grandpa still thinks that “uptalking” announcers sound “unprofessional” and lacking “clarity and authority”.
I got into an internet argument with some dimwit who insisted that all Australians talk that way, based on viewing stupid Australian soaps.
It’s a teenager thing, not an Australian thing. Most of us do not talk that way. It’s deliberately affected/exaggerated on those soaps so that the actors “talk like teenagers”. It’s very rare to hear it from an Australian adult and it’s not that common in kids either.
[quote=“Elmer_J.Fudd, post:68, topic:963418”]
I lived less than a mile from The Cuckoo’s Nest
[/quote]So, you woulda been deep in the hardcore scene at the birthplace of the Germs, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, the rest of Decline and Fall, no?
I was same era but SF and Sacramento area
The upspeak thing. Really? is a pretty common example in standard American.
Chinese and Japanese do it too. That said, the upspeak is on the first syllable. Such as “honto ni” in Japanese and 真的 (zhende in Mandarin)
X, the Blasters, and Social Distortion were more my scene. Hardcore in OC was usually just an excuse for a brawl and I usually avoided it.
I heard Japanese was flat.
Not flat
Sorry, I should have added some emojis; it was a joke (have a look at the video).
[quote=“Elmer_J.Fudd, post:73, topic:963418”]
X, the Blasters, and Social Distortion were more my scene. Hardcore in OC was usually just an excuse for a brawl and I usually avoided it.
[/quote]Gotcha. Tangent. The Blasters played at the UC Davis coffee house around 1981. Those guys were so much fun. College Radio KDVS sponsored it. Blasters were pretty cheap but had riders for the amount of booze. We just had a giant party, played pool, the little dinky venue was stuffed to the gills, fire department came and instead of shutting it down stationed firemen in full gear in all the door ways. You just couldn’t make this shit up, and the Blasters played a great set.
I was amazed to hear that Mike Ness of Social Distortion is still alive. Would not have thought that would happen back in say 1983…
Gender dynamics come into play in our perceptions of uptalk and vocal fry. The dialect coach Eric Singer, who has an entertaining series of videos about accent on YouTube, points out that when vocal fry is discussed, it’s usually in reference to the voices of women, and especially young women. He points out that men use vocal fry as well, and performs an interesting demonstration, reading a portion of the Gettysburg Address in creaky voice, and then having a female colleague read the same. (Relevant portion is from 5:42 to 6:29)
In a similar vein, native Japanese speakers warn not to learn spoken Japanese by watching anime.
I’ve noticed it (uptalk) a lot when I’ve watched Australian movies/TV shows.