Valley Girl Dialect

The purpose of this exercise is for the students to get familiar with the California, or valley girl dialect. This is a dialect that many students have heard, probably through movies such as legally blonde or clueless. This will be an interesting way for the students to realize how different a dialect can be in the English language. This dialect has also been called Valspeak.

Emphasizing phrases: Some words are used very liberally to exaggerate a sentence.

Ex I so totally aced that test!

Oh most definitely we are gonna go to the beach after school!

Using like as a quotative particle: In Valspeak, the word like is used almost in the same was a comma. Where we might say “ umm” or pause between thoughts, Valspeak uses like.

I got out of class, and like, I was so tired.

I was like, shut up, you gotta be joking

Intonation of phrases to make a phrase sound like a question.

Your taking Todd to the prom? ( simple statement made as a question)

Girl 1: I’m going to quit my job on Saturday

Like, shut up? ( phrase used as a question. Here it is inquiring as to the seriousness of girl 1’s statement.

Students will listen to the following clip:

Exercise 1. The students will visit the following dialect translator and translate a passage into valley girl. Some interesting ideas for transfer are poems, samples from essays, etc. Show the students how different a Robert Frost poem might be if translated into valley girl. The students should be pretty familiar with this type of talk. What is important for the students to realize is how diverse our culture is, and how valley girl is obviously just one different dialect spoken in this country.

Exercise 2: Have the students watch an edited version of the following youtube video Has the dialect been played up to represent the stereotype of the typical surfer? What rules that we have covered are seen in this video? The students will write a short response 250- 300 words, about the prevalence of Valspeak in Midwestern language.

Exercise 3. For the last exercise, the students will break into pairs and will take turns interviewing each other. The interviewer will speak in a regular Midwestern accent, and the the person interviewed will use Valspeak. This will help to give the students a clear contrast of Midwestern language to Valley speak. The students will write a one page response to this, focusing on the differences in Midwestern language and Valspeak. Does the use of Valspeak make one seem less intelligent? Ask students for their opinions.