In Southern California, that beautiful, sunny part of the country that is ruined by the fact that people still wear trucker hats even though it is 2013, men are starting to talk like women. Specifically, “Valley girls.”
The BBC reports that the Acoustical Society of America found that men are “uptalking” — a way of speaking usually found in women from California and Australia. But now, men who live in SoCal are, like, totally talking the same way.
“We found use of uptalk in all of our speakers, despite their diverse backgrounds in socioeconomic status, ethnicity, bilingualism and gender,” Amanda Ritchart, a linguist at the University of California, told BBC. “We believe that uptalk is becoming more prevalent and systematic in its use for the younger generations in Southern California.”
Twenty-three males and females from 18-22 were recorded speaking and all had the same inflections and “Valley girl” tone in their voices. Valley girl speak makes people sound almost as dumb as someone with a deep Southern accent, but not quite as bad.
The way of speaking used to be limited to females, but now it is showing up in male speech patterns, proving that California is full of either A) dirty hipsters or B) rich UCLA kids with unlimited access to their parents’ credit cards.
Prof. Amalia Arvanati at the University of Kent told the BBC that “uptalking” denotes insecurity or lack of confidence from the speaker.
“It grates on people, some people think it sounds really ditzy or insecure,” Arvanati said. “This does not accurately come across like that to the native speakers.”