Help identifying an accent?

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

Has anybody heard a particular accent where the speaker seems to go breathless and their voice cracks at the end of the word, especially certain consonants? It seems to be mainly women in their 20s and early 30s, and seems to be an affected, "trendy" accent. A few years back it seemed to be everywhere; every TV commercial trying to sell to this demographic was using it.

If you've seen the movie Fever Pitch, you know what i'm talking about. Drew Barrymore's character had this accent, and Jimmy Fallon commented that she was talking out the side of her mouth.

PS. Why ask this in Davis? There are people here who speak this way, and it tends to stick out like a sore thumb. Perhaps some resident linguist can explain. Why not ask this in B0st0n? Dont want to scroll through a snarkfest.

Comments

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

ITYM "enunciate". :)

[four-thorns.livejournal.com]

but if everybody annunciated, that would be pretty interesting too

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

Well the whole Valley Girl thing has been around for, what, 25 years now, so ive pretty much grown up with it and it doesnt sound weird to me.

But this other thing, it just seemed to pop up out of nowhere. Nobody who i know well speaks this way, but then i'll walk through Davis and hear an entire conversation conducted in the lingo.

[krystynayt.livejournal.com]

Or people should stop being judgmental and try to listen to what someone is saying, rather than how they're saying it. :D

Just sayin'. I've heard the truly stupid speak confidently and eloquently; I've heard the superior intellect speak with "likes", "ums" and regionalisms.

...I'll agree that it's easier to give up trying to get people to not judge others by their verbal cover and to simply adopt a certain manner of speaking, though.

By the way, you've got great vocabulary, and you bring up interesting points, but what you say could be undermined by the elementary spelling errors. I don't say this to be bitchy, really (mistakes happen and I make a ton of them regularly) -- but since you seem to care about verbal appearances, I thought I might point that out. ;)

...that came out a hell of a lot snarkier than I meant it to be. I tried to soften it with smileys. Really!

[four-thorns.livejournal.com]

for the record, the current usage of "like" was started by the beats, as a way of indicating that no object could ever encompass the totality of the concept that it was compared with-- for example, saying "she's like beautiful" rather than "she's beautiful", because no one person or thing can ever fully embody beauty, but only approach or approximate it.

that isn't to say that that's how people use it now, or that they're aware of the purpose of what they're saying-- just that the usage isn't necessarity indicative of insecurity or vapidity or bad speech habits.

[krystynayt.livejournal.com]

There are also studies that suggest that the usage of "like" is fairly complex. That doesn't mean the people who use it are complex, but it's not some stupid, simplistic linguistic glitch. :P