I always wondered where , like, you know, where did this Valley Girl crap of the (gag me with a spoon) 1980’s come from, and to what Valley did it belong? I know there was a song about it, but was it real? …Although, it became real soon enough! Or, did it start on TV, or, like, what? (Yuk! Grody to the max!)
Well the Wikipedia says that Frank Zappa seems to have been the first person to pick up on it, and proceed to popularise it.
I’m not supposed to say, but it was me. Please don’t tell everyone.
Maybe, but “uptalk” (what an ex-girlfriend who is a voice coach called the inflection) was around for a few years before the Zappa song.
Oh, and the valley in question was the San Fernando Valley, near Los Angeles.
Fer sherr, fer sherr. Totally.
Like, o m’god!
Like, totally!
He’s like, Lord God King Bufu!
Dammit! Now I have an earworm. One I really, really don’t want…
Valley girls started it.
(Is this a trick question?)
I just watched the first season of SNL on DVD. Laraine Newman was imitating the Valley Girl uptalk back in 1975.
Heh. The poor Valley gets no respect.
It’s not just “near” Los Angeles … it IS Los Angeles … the northern half of it.
The Valley tried to secede a couple of years ago because they felt like the city government was pouring lots of tax money into the Basin and leaving them with the scraps.
LA is, what, 40 neighborhoods looking for a downtown? It’s hard to tell what’s actually LA and what’s just near LA…
Way more than that. The San Fernando Valley alone has 5 incorporated cities and 43 other communities over 345 square miles.
It’s like hippie girl talk but high on coke not grass and mix in rampant cosumerism.
Gail Matthius (from the dreaded Doumanian half-season) is credited in at least one SNL book as being the first to bring the Valley Girl character type (vocalization and appearance/attitude) into the public consciousness. That was from 1980. She also did the character on the short-lived sketch comedy show “Laugh Trax” that aired on NBC in 1982.
Right. Long ago I realized that valley girl dialect was closely related to hippie dialect and surfer-dude dialect.
Imagine Chong saying, “Ooooohhhwwowwww…toooootally tuuuuubularr…” and then speed it up the way a valley girl would say it and you’ll get an idea of how one style evolved into the other.
There may not have been a name for it before 1980, but that vocal style did exist before then. Laraine was in a skit which centered around a group therapy session and nailed the vocalization and mannerisms such has the hair-twisting and gum-chewing. I really wish I could remember which episode it’s in. Anyway, before '80s that accent was just what people condidered flakey Californiaspeak.
It existed waaay before 1980 and in a different valley too: the San Gabriel Valley. I heard it spoken by my latina classmates all throughout grade school in the late 60’s and early 70’s.
“Ay, Silvia, why do you go OWW-oot with him? Oh my GAW-awd! He’s totally gross!!”
Oh yeah, I’m not saying that the vocal style didn’t exist. Believe me, Gail Matthius is not exactly a powerhouse of creativity. I’m just saying that according to a book I read once hers was the first character that brought together the look, the mannerisms and the name “Valley girl.” I used to love that “Laugh Trax” show she was on (Mister Fridge ruled) and I remember her Vicki the Val character from that.
Yes, and what exactly did “totally tubular” mean? Does LA have a love for cylinders? Thank goodness for the East Coast! Those earthquakes have scrambled your brains out there! I seem to recall some '80s TV show where they talked like that. But, that show conflicted with the timeslot I reserved for cleaning my toilets… 
First time I heard it on TV was Jennifer DeNuccio on Square Pegs.