This chapter examines Amy Heckerling's position as a writer and director in the teen genre. Her use of language, and the means of self-expression granted to her teenage characters, reinforce a significant convention of the genre, and allow for distinctive and occasionally mystifying dialogue that can be welcoming for the genre's young audience. The use of teenspeak marks out a generational community separated from the adult characters around them by a boundary of age and references to specific cultural texts. A linguistic generation gap can be seen in Heckerling's first feature film as director, Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), which was adapted to the screen by Cameron Crowe, from his own book of the same name. However, it is in Heckerling's 1995 film Clueless that her role as both writer and director allowed the language of teenagers to become more complex. The essay will analyze the language presented in Heckerling's teen texts using Michael Halliday's theories of social dialects and Mikhail Bakhtin's analysis of speech genres and the “utterance.” These theories will not only highlight the style of Heckerling's screenplay but also demonstrate the linguistic structures operating within the community of characters that inhabit her oeuvre.

Linguistically, the worlds of Fast Times and Clueless may appear straightforward as there is only one language at work: contemporary American English. These movies are also clear examples of the teen genre, with narrative tropes (romance, comedy, the stress of high school) and archetypal characters (the popular and unpopular cliques, the disconnected parents and teachers) that are quite conventional and recognizable from across the genre itself, and from the familiar literary characters in Jane Austen's novel Emma (1815) which inspired the film's narrative. However, in the most standout and notable teen films, such as Clueless, the use of conventions allow us to see the status of the teen genre and also how the genre adapts and extends itself time and time again. The dialogue may begin from a recognizable point, English, and more specifically a combination of familiar Californian “Valley-speak” and politically correct terminology that became so prominent in the 1990s. The words may be striking and lyrical (while also indicating the intelligence of the speaker), but this language has the power to change a character's social position within a specific film, and to have an influence across the genre, affecting the dialogue in subsequent films.