Hmm, probably several different things that could be described as "rising intonation," Lighter. When I visited Liverpool, England, the speech feature that jumped out at me was what I would also call a rising intonation at end of statements. But that was a different one than the WestCoast/Cali one! We may be thinking of different things, since I don't associate what I'm hearing the majority of high school kids in my town (in the San Gabriel Valley) do with the US South...and time and again when people deliberately imitate a "Los Angeles" accent, they do it.

Or maybe these are all a similar thing, but I (and some others) don't "hear" them the same when it is combined with other Southern US, Australian, Irish, etc accent features!

Let's take a poll! :-)