Hey! Hey! You! You! Valspeak is back! – And before you say that it is “so way no way”, listen to the most popular song on the planet  at the moment.

 

All around the world ‘Girlfriend’ the new rock video from  22 year old Canadian singer songwriter Avril Lavigne is the most popular music video, and contains the classic Valspeak line “She’s like, so  whatever!”  which for those of you not acquinted with the idiom  means “She is not worth my caring about”.  

 

 Valspeak came into existence in the 1970’s  and is named after the rich, consumerist San Fanando Valley girls who are said to be the orginators of this way of speaking.

 

Over the years it has augmented with surfer and skateboarding slang to be  “so like totally” part of common culture in much of the English speaking world.

 

Modern Education  has had  a major influence on the growth of Valspeak. During the 1960’s formal standardised English of the type demanded  in our schools was  found to be an impediment to creative thought and learning,  and so children were encouraged to express themselves in the language of their homes and community. 

 

Freeing communication from the stultifying over-elaboration of formal English allowed  children to experiment with language, and  in the process several new ways  of communicating  came into being. In the USA  ghettos, rap and ghetto slang  developed as a distinctive language of the underclass, and in the high schools of the rich consumerist middle class suburbs, Valspeak came into existance.

 

Valspeak is full of  new words, old words given a different meaning, and old words combined in new ways. Many of the words have transcended  their Valspeak orgins and become part of mainstream communication.  Much remains “so totally” teenager, including the use of the words “so” and “totally”! The combination "As if!" meaning: "You are wrong", or "It's not going to happen", or "You wish", etc. is now in common usage, as is “awesome”, and "what-ever”.

 

 

Much of Valspeak is drawn from TV programmes. A “Joanie” is an unhip girl, based on  the Joanie Cunningham character on the ‘Happy days’  programme. “Later days” or “later dates” meaning “goodbye” is lifted from Disney’s ‘The Weekenders’, where it was said at the end of each episode by the character Tino.

 

The use of some words have more illustrious origins. A “Monet” is someone (or thing) that looks good from afar, but up close it’s a total mess. My favorite is “Tripendicular!” which means “awesome” or unbelievable.  (Tripendicular is a ‘triangle with three perpendicular sides’  - a geometric impossibility in Euclidian/plane geometry).

 

Old fashioned traditionalists deplore children using Valspeak and argue that the new generation are the most inarticulate generation ever. “Well Duh!” -  Valspeakers think that traditional English has as much meaninglessness as  their speech contains and there is no doubt that they have a point - as anyone who has read business jargon or any communication from the bureaucracy can tell you.

 

What is important is that Valspeak is one of the spinoffs that comes from empowering children, from encouraging them to find their words to express themselves. If it is juvenile it is because that is what they are. Lets celebrate it.  - Meanwhile “I’m audi”,  - Which for non-Valspeakers means, “I’m out of here”.