Author Topic: So...  (Read 6759 times)

pat

  • Eulexic
  • ***
  • Posts: 3377
  • Rugby, England.
    • View Profile
So...
« on: June 11, 2015, 07:51:35 PM »
There seems to be a growing trend, here in the UK at least, for people to start sentences, both written and spoken, with 'So'. The worst example I experienced was a witness in a trial who started every answer with 'So...' or 'Yeah, so...'.

I found this article on the internet that suggests it's been going on for quite a while; either I'm not very observant and haven't noticed it before or it's getting worse. Is it yet another thing that we can blame Mark Zuckerberg for?

http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-everyone-is-starting-sentences-with-the-word-so-2014-5?IR=T

So... has anyone else noticed it?

Linda

  • WordStar
  • ****
  • Posts: 7055
  • Cumbria, England
    • View Profile
Re: So...
« Reply #1 on: June 11, 2015, 10:49:30 PM »
So, right, I work with a young woman who invariable starts her sentences this way!  Why?!  She also is one of the "yeah, yeah, yeah" brigade - surely a simple "yes" would suffice?  What is the younger generation coming to, I grumpily mutter to myself and realize(ise) I have turned into a grumpy old woman - yay!!  >:D

mkenuk

  • Eulexic
  • ***
  • Posts: 2671
  • Life? Don't talk to me about life.
    • View Profile
Re: So...
« Reply #2 on: June 12, 2015, 03:34:45 AM »
I may be missing the point here, Pat, but it seems to me that people have been starting sentences with 'so' for quite a long time.
 
John Cleese did it a lot in the 'Monty Python' sketches: (to Eric Idle) 'So you want to go on an adventure holiday?' which of course sets EI away on his wonderful monologue about package holidays. (to Michael Palin) 'So you want to join the Secret Service? Can you keep a secret....?' etc

It also seems to have been a stand-up comedian's turn of phrase for a long time ('...so there were these three nuns sitting in a railway carriage........) (Billy Connolly, circa 1975)

I rather think that this is one thing for which we can't lay the blame at Mr Zuckerberg's door.

'Yeah, yeah, yeah' ? - The Beatles' 'She Loves You' (1962)

MK  ;D




ensiform

  • Paronomaniac
  • ******
  • Posts: 459
    • View Profile
Re: So...
« Reply #3 on: June 12, 2015, 03:41:50 AM »
"So, now I have confess’d that he is thine, And I myself am mortgag’d to thy will."

Shakespeare, sonnet 134.  1595.... OR SO.   ;)

pat

  • Eulexic
  • ***
  • Posts: 3377
  • Rugby, England.
    • View Profile
Re: So...
« Reply #4 on: June 12, 2015, 03:43:04 AM »
I don't have any problem with the examples you give, Mike. 'So' can be a useful little word.

I was referring more to the habit of starting every sentence with the word. For example:

Q: Where did you go on holiday?
A: So, we went to Greece.
Q: Good weather?
A: So, it was sunny most days.

That's the sort of thing that seems to be getting more common.

TRex

  • Eulexic
  • ***
  • Posts: 2038
  • ~50 miles from Chicago, in the Corn (maize) Belt
    • View Profile
Re: So...
« Reply #5 on: June 12, 2015, 04:02:54 AM »
Some time back, I heard an interviewee on a news programme start just about every sentence with 'So....' (that's with a pause before starting the real sentence). I found it grating. I commented about it to my wife who told me it has become the 'fashionable' (says who? I ask) replacement for 'Uh...' or 'Umm...' because it is supposed to be more 'educated'. (Not to me, it doesn't.)

... I grumpily mutter to myself and realize(ise) I have turned into a grumpy old woman - yay!!  >:D

Well, you got that half right!  >:D

Hobbit

  • Eulexic
  • ***
  • Posts: 4599
  • Bletchley, Buckinghamshire, England
    • View Profile
Re: So...
« Reply #6 on: June 12, 2015, 04:41:58 AM »
Please can we add "you know" or should that be "yu know" to the above! Very irritating :(
Linda - I'm also in the grumpy old woman club!  Think I've turned into a female Victor Meldrew >:D
If life gives you lemons, add a large gin & some tonic...

Linda

  • WordStar
  • ****
  • Posts: 7055
  • Cumbria, England
    • View Profile
Re: So...
« Reply #7 on: June 12, 2015, 04:46:12 AM »
Quote
Well, you got that half right! 

I shudder to even ask, so I won't!!  >:D

cmh

  • Paronomaniac
  • ******
  • Posts: 351
    • View Profile
Re: So...
« Reply #8 on: June 12, 2015, 06:21:14 AM »
I was always taught by my junior school teachers that a sentence should "never begin with and or but or so" and I don't like this trend but I hate "you know" far far more!! I don't think that"fashion" or "trends"are an excuse. Fashion is fickle and should not be applied to the  basic building blocks of grammar.

pat

  • Eulexic
  • ***
  • Posts: 3377
  • Rugby, England.
    • View Profile
Re: So...
« Reply #9 on: June 12, 2015, 07:59:47 AM »
Please can we add "you know" or should that be "yu know" to the above! Very irritating :(
Linda - I'm also in the grumpy old woman club!  Think I've turned into a female Victor Meldrew >:D

To say nothing of 'like'! That's three club members then.  >:D

While we're on the subject, another weird one is when people answer a question with 'yeah, no...'.

So, like, what's all that about, innit?

Tom44

  • Paronomaniac
  • ******
  • Posts: 462
  • Pyrotechnics Live
    • View Profile
Re: So...
« Reply #10 on: June 12, 2015, 10:52:12 AM »
"Yeah, yeah, yeah" said quickly, almost sotto voce:  A New Yorkism.  I have seen several instances of that particular speech mannerism in folks from the NY region, but pretty much never hear from native Midwesterners (US).

As to "You know" - a funny true story.  I met a man from Vancouver, BC, when we were on a trip together, and he was complaining about how people caricatured Canadians by adding "eh" to the end of their sentences. "Well," said he," we don't always end a sentence in eh.  But what I don't like is you Americans going around saying "you know" all the time.  Its you know that, you know this.  Well, sometimes you don't know, eh?"  I swear its a trues tory, and I know he didn't have any awareness of that last "eh."
Stevens Point, WI

Tom

  • Word-meister
  • ****
  • Posts: 171
    • View Profile
Re: So...
« Reply #11 on: June 13, 2015, 09:08:42 AM »
I wonder if perhaps in days gone by the word 'well' was more commonly used when answering a question rather than 'so'. In Pat's example:
Q. Where did you go on your holiday?
A. Well, we went to Greece...
Q. Good weather?
A. Well, most days were fine...

a non-amos

  • Glossologian
  • **
  • Posts: 1053
    • View Profile
Re: So...
« Reply #12 on: June 16, 2015, 01:41:22 PM »
These are all means of extemporizing.  They are the meaningless utterances that fall trippingly from our tongues while we try to think of something more meaningful to say.

A more skillful and thoughtful speaker would say nothing at all. 

A pause can be more dramatic (and meaningful) than . . . . . . . most anything spoken.
Carpe digitus.
(Roughly translated, this is possibly the world's oldest "pull my finger" joke)

Calilasseia

  • Cryptoverbalist
  • *
  • Posts: 522
  • Pass the dissection kit ...
    • View Profile
Re: So...
« Reply #13 on: October 28, 2015, 07:35:20 PM »
One of the more, shall we say, avant-garde uses of the word "so" appears frequently in post-modernist textual critique, as in "so Derrida". The form "so X", where X is the name of another author, is used as a shorthand for "espousing ideas that bear the hallmark of X's thinking", referring to the fact that the ideas contained in the text under examination are conceptually similar to those of the cited author. Though I gather the intent isn't to accuse a given writer of plagiarism, rather, the usage is a device to indicate that said writer is either [1] deriving those ideas from a different starting point, or [2] integrating those ideas into a novel framework, of a sort unanticipated by the cited author.

Those who suspect that this usage of "so" as a means of signalling the presence of conceptual overlap in two different authors, may be forgiven for thinking that said usage was also erected as a means of distinguishing ideological initiates from the rest, with a view to signalling that whoever is deploying this term is part of an ideological in-group, and therefore to be taken more seriously by fellow initiates than outsiders. It certainly seems that way in much post-modernist writing.
Remember: if the world's bees disappear, we become extinct with them ...

TRex

  • Eulexic
  • ***
  • Posts: 2038
  • ~50 miles from Chicago, in the Corn (maize) Belt
    • View Profile
Re: So...
« Reply #14 on: October 29, 2015, 02:21:56 PM »
I don't read 'post-modernist textual critique', so I haven't encountered this usage. It seems akin to the (more traditional) use of pace (always in italics since it is Latin).