Talking with Coury Murdock the other night (he's playing Che in DMTC's "Evita", opening on June 19, 2015, in Davis, CA), he disclosed an unusual insight, maybe even brilliant. His observation is that the Valley Girl sociolect derives from Mexican Spanish, which apparently also features rising intonation at the end of a sentence. If so, that might explain why it was noted first in Southern California in the Seventies. How the jump between languages occurred would be interesting to understand.
On the other hand, people's brains being so plastic and all, perhaps the sociolect entered Spanish from English. More studies are needed!
Here is a recent study out on Valspeak.
Oddly enough, I remember hearing Valspeak growing up in Albuquerque, NM, when I was in middle school: specifically, about 1969. I just bet Valspeak has been around for a long time, long before the Seventies, and not just in Southern California, but completely nameless until Frank Zappa had the great good fortune to notice it, and provide a label.
It would be great to study the origins of Valspeak. The decline of malls in recent decades has done great damage to American English.
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