User:Myrvin/So (at the beginning of sentences)

So (at the beginning of sentences)

In speech and writing, the use of the word "So" at the beginning of sentences has increased over the past few years. As it has become more common, so it has become more irritating to many people. It can be considered to be a Discourse particle, Discourse marker, or "introductory particle"

Noting its use "for starting a statement in a conversation", Macmillan Dictionary has the following:

a. used for continuing a conversation, especially for starting a new subject or starting to ask a question

So, let's get down to business.

So, what do you suggest we do next?

b. used for introducing a question in order to make sure that what you have heard or noticed is correct

So, you've finally decided to come with us?

History

Referring to the usage of 'so' as an "introductory particle", the Oxford English Dictionary points to some very early uses of 'So' and 'So, so ...' at the beginning of statements. Saying that it is "common" in his plays, it cites Shakespeare's 1594 The Rape of Lucrece: "So so, quoth he, these lets attend the time." The dictionary also cites, from 1602, Thomas Heywood's "How Man may chuse Good Wife": "So, let me see: my apron." Also, from 1775, Sheridan's "The Rivals": "So, so, ma'am! I humbly beg pardon."

In modern times, Michael Lewis noted its use in Silicon Valley before 1999:

... he thought for a moment and then said, "So... " This was not unusual. When a computer programmers answers a question, he often begins with the word "so."

"So" cuts across the borders within the computing class just as "like" cuts across the borders within the class of adolescent girls. It's the most distinctive verbal tic manufactured by the engineering mind. Silicon Valley engineers for whom English is a second or even third language acquire it as readily as native speakers. Nobody knows why. Some say that "so" imposes the semblance of logic on an essentially illogical event, human conversation. After all, "so implies that the answer follows directly from the question. Others claim that "so" just buys you time to think.

Academic comment

Uta Lenk, in 1995, set out some examples of the use of 'so' and 'so anyway' as discourse markers. She suggests that 'so anyway' is a "Signal of Continuation".

Barbara Johnstone gives an example of a narrative in which, at the start of several statements, "The word so consistently signals shifts to increasingly crucial and suspenseful episodes in the story." The narrative includes the following: "So I went bowling with a couple guys from work ... So I was driving home ... So he puts me in this car and drives me downtown ...". Johnstone writes:

So is conventionally enough chosen as a discourse marker that Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (9th ed., 1983) lists "used as an introductory particle" as one of the definitions of so. Far more thoroughly, Schiffrin (1987,pp. 191—227) devotes a chapter to so and because, in which she shows that so marks superordinate material on structural and semantic levels as well as on the level of speech act and action.

An article by G.B. Bolden notes that the word is usually considered to have "inferential functions", but other uses, "characterize the upcoming action as having been ‘on the speaker’s mind’ or ‘on agenda’ for some time." It "emerges from incipiency", with "‘so’ as a marker of ‘emergence from incipiency’ ... an attempt to account for a large variety of ‘so’ usages."

In another paper, Bolden explains that another use of the "so-preface marks the turn-constructional unit (TCU) as dealing with the business of the conversation that has been projected by the initiation of the call and delayed by other, incidental matters." The use of the so-preface brings the discussion back to the business in hand.

Popular comment and reaction

In 2010, The New York Times commented:

“So” may be the new “well,” “um,” “oh” and “like.” No longer content to lurk in the middle of sentences, it has jumped to the beginning, where it can portend many things: transition, certitude, logic, attentiveness, a major insight.

In 2011, The Spectator's Mark Mason wrote that

Part of the answer might be the need to belong. ‘It’s called “accommodation”,’ says Dr Penelope Gardner-Chloros, of the department of applied linguistics and communication at Birkbeck College. ‘We accommodate, and converge with, the group of people we want to belong to. Someone using “so” like this may well be doing it because they’ve heard other people doing it. It spreads like the flu.’ This might explain how the So epidemic is spreading, but not how it started. Why use the word this way in the first place?

Also:

‘The word is a marker of cause and result,’ says Dr Gardner-Chloros. ‘Someone who starts an answer with “so” is marking that what he’s saying is coherent with what came before — the question. He’s saying what he wants to say, like a politician — but trying to make it sound like it’s an answer to the question

Also in 2011, broadcasting some parts of interviews where interviewees all started their answers to questions with the word 'so', the BBC Today Programme noted that "Beginning a sentence with the word "so" has become a regular occurrence in everyday conversation, and it has not been received entirely positively." The programme spoke to John Rentoul of The Independent on Sunday, who suggested that the usage came "probably from the Internet", and "has become a plague".

External links

• example.com