According to an article I found, valley girl speak
or uptalk is used by both men and women but women tend use it more frequently. The stereotype for American southern California
valley girl accent originates in the 1980’s.
Frank Zappa’s song “Valley Girl” was released during that decade along
with movies like Valley Girl, Heathers, and later Clueless. Uptalk is not limited to the Southern
California region, it is however a staple of their dialect. Sociologist Thomas J. Linneman found “Men use
uptalk more when surrounded by women contestants, and when correcting a woman
contestant after she makes an incorrect response. The more successful a man is,
the less likely he is to use uptalk; the more successful a woman is, the more
likely she is to use uptalk.” One theory
as to why uptalk is used is to prevent interruption.
My personal theory is that women are used to having
to work harder to be heard. The more
success they gain the more they expect people to listen to them, so they pitch
their voice accordingly in preparation of being interrupted. Men deepen their voices to sound authoritative,
so they are not interrupted at all. In answer to my original question men do speak valley girl, but it does not fit in with their natural language usage the way it does for women. I had not connected valley girl speak with Kaylar's "Language Police" until I started looking into it. Now that I have it makes sense that the two would go hand in hand.
Sources:
https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/23/overturning-the-myth-of-valley-girl-speak/https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/12/scienceshot-men-talk-valley-girls-too
I think this is very interesting. I never would've assumed that men also spoke valley girl. Valley girl is so feminized that it can't just be "Valley" it has to specifically be "Valley GIRL". I think because the rest of the world looks at valley girl talk as specifically female, many men try their hardest not to speak it when other men around for fear of appearing less masculine not by women but other men, whereas when they are specifically around females it's sort of a safe space. They're just part of the group. I like your theory about success and women speaking like that to be heard. While I don't know if it's always a conscious decision, success/money is associated with valley girl speak so it would make sense.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your post. I think it was really interesting to read about the depictions of “uptalk” and the male persona. Many of my guy friends came off as super masculine with low toned voices, like they were so tough. But as I got to know them better, they did rise in intonation, like they were trying to be understood better. Males can have “uptalk” tendencies and it’s not uncommon in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteThis post is great. It is quite clear just through some simple social awarenesses that guys are just as guilty of this uptalk as girls are. However, men are especially guilty of it in the presence of women, as is mentioned in your post. Part of the uptalk, I think, is the byproduct of wanting to fit in and not be different than others. If you don't use uptalk, you may be looked at as being different and the opposite would be true if uptalk wasn't as popular as it is.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know about this tendency ! It reminded me of what we call here in Chile " hablar cantadito", which literally means "speaking like singing".This is very typical of people from the south.I know that maybe i'm comparing 2 different things (an accent with a speech pattern). However, when I read about the uptalk, I immediately thought about this.
ReplyDeleteThe follong video shows 2 people talking in a very " Sureño" accent.Although this is just a parody, it sounds exactly the same!
https://youtu.be/PJaEEoXaKsg
That is one thing I never understood--why women get "shamed" for uptalking when males do it, too. I guess it goes to show how hypocritical we can be as a society, and that we (males) really have no room to talk! This blog post was really interesting, though, as you never really perceive men to be valley girl speakers. Now it makes me question if I speak that way...
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned that one of the reasons people might use uptalk is to prevent interruption because it kind of leads into the next statement. I wonder if this is true...
ReplyDeleteBut why do we interrupt? I thought it was interesting how in the book it talked about two kinds of communication. One was about lots of overlapping talking, where interrupting was almost a good thing with lots of communication all at once. The other was quieter, with only one person speaking at a time (interrupting is not a good thing from this perspective). I don't think uptalk is really about a fear of being interrupted, although it's possible. Interruption isn't always seen as a negative thing; sometimes a (kind) interruption just shows the excitement and interaction of the people you're talking with. Is uptalk a protective measure against this kind of interruption? I'm not sure.
Also, as a side note, uptalk reminds me of playing hide-and-seek when I was younger and counting really loudly so the people hiding would know how much time they had. My family would talk about how we said all the numbers in one tone and then raised the tone on every 9 ( we would say "twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-niiiiiiiiine, thirty, and the same for each successive set of ten). I think it's pretty normal to do this, but is it for the same reason? Are we raising the tone for the last something-nine so as to warn our listeners that we are leading into the next set of numbers?