Ask Lemmy

It's got California origins in the US, but it's spread.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_girl

A valley girl is the stereotype of a materialistic upper-middle-class young woman, associated with unique vocabulary, vocal mannerisms, and California accent features, who comes from the Los Angeles commuter communities of the San Fernando Valley.[1] A youth subcultural identity and stock character in American popular media, it originated in and is most associated with the 1980s and 1990s.

Valleyspeak, or valspeak, is a (stereotypical) California English social dialect and accompanying vocal features, best associated with Valley girls, though elements of it may be used by other demographics, including some men of a similar background ("val dudes").[3] This sociolect became an international fad for a certain period in the 1980s and 1990s. Valleyspeak is popularly characterized by both the steady use of uptalk, certain vowel sounds, and its vocabulary. The vowel sounds are in fact part of the larger California vowel shift becoming more common in the American West and Canada, as well as elsewhere in the U.S. Certain features once associated with Valspeak are now simply mainstream in many American speakers born since the late 20th century.[4]

Features and qualifiers

• "Like" as a discourse marker. "Like" is used as a filler word, similar to "um" or "er", as in, "I'm, like, totally about to blow chunks." When "like" is functioning as a discourse marker, the word itself does not semantically change the phrase or sentence. Instead, it provides time for the speaker to formulate what they will say next. The word is always unstressed when used in this way. "Like" does not always function as a discourse marker in Valspeak. Consider the following two sentences: "It was like eight feet deep," and "I think that, like, it is entertaining." Even though both sentences contain the word "like," they employ it differently. In the former, "like" serves as an adverb that is synonymous with "approximately", whereas the latter "like" is a discourse marker, adding no additional meaning to the sentence.[15] Furthermore, "like" is frequently used to introduce quoted speech. For example, a person can recount a conversation by stating, "So, uh, I'm like, 'Where did he go?' And she was like, 'I don't know, I haven't seen him.'"[16]