So, having conceived of that title for a blog post on a topic that has been stewing on the back burner of my mind, I googled those words and found them in a 2010 essay by Anand Giridharadas (in the NYT) called "Follow My Logic? A Connective Word Takes the Lead":
“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....Giridharadas traces the tic to 1990s-era Silicon Valley, where software-oriented minds visualize "conversation as a logical, unidirectional process — if this, then that."
One can dredge up ancient instances of “so” as a sentence starter. In his 14th-century poem “Troilus and Criseyde,” Chaucer launched a verse with, “So on a day he leyde him doun to slepe. ...” But for most of its life, “so” has principally been a conjunction, an intensifier and an adverb.
What is new is its status as the favored introduction to thoughts, its encroachment on the territory of “well,” “oh,” “um” and their ilk.
This logical tinge to “so” has followed it out of software. Compared to “well” and “um,” starting a sentence with “so” uses the whiff of logic to relay authority. Whereas “well” vacillates, “so” declaims....Too phallocratic? Well... I'm saying "well" like a person of the 80s... consider the theory of the linguist Galina Bolden, who's done scholarly writing on the topic of "so":
She believes that “so” is also about the culture of empathy that is gaining steam as the world embraces the increasing complexity of human backgrounds and geographies.And then there's Michael Erard, author of "Um...: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean":
To begin a sentence with “oh,” she said in an e-mail message, is to focus on what you have just remembered and your own concerns. To begin with “so,” she said, is to signal that one’s coming words are chosen for their relevance to the listener.
The ascendancy of “so,” Dr. Bolden said, “suggests that we are concerned with displaying interest for others and downplaying our interest in our own affairs.”
The rise of “so,” he said via e-mail, is “another symptom that our communication and conversational lives are chopped up and discontinuous in actual fact, but that we try in several ways to sew them together — or ‘so’ them together, as it were — in order to create a continuous experience.”So it is written...
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Find me a local TV News Babe (or Guy) doing an 'on the scene' who does not start every third sentence with "Now."
(Also, it would be nice to hear an occasional "Then..." in place of "That is when..." and "He ended up...")
Well, when I wrote my Spock comment, I did notice my use of "well" at the beginning of a sentence and immediately thought of Althouse's prior riff on "so", and why "well" was a better fit for the sentence.
During college we invented our own Star Trek drinking game one night.
The biggest trigger to drink five slammers was "Spock becomes sexually aroused," remembering at the time only one episode when he returns to Vulcan to mate.
Well, the episode we watched that night contained this scene with Uhura ...
I think of "so" at the beginning of a sentence like that last one as shorthand for "consequently" (i.e., because of).
"Well" at the front of a sentence like that I think of as shorthand for "as fate would have it" or "as it turned out", something connected to but random or independent of the prior context, not dependent on it.
It may not have been born in Silicon Valley, but that's where it was raised to adulthood. Around 2000, everyone at Adobe and Microsoft began starting every sentence with "so". I witnessed individuals going through the transformation from not doing that to doing that.
In German, the word "also" (pronounced as though the s is an American z) means roughly "so", and starting sentences with "also" is a common German tic.
I always thought "So" was an odd name for Peter Gabriel's album.
This fall (2012), however, he has agreed to release a deluxe edition of his 1986 landmark album So. The disc transformed him from an art rocker with a cult following into one of the biggest pop stars in the world. MTV played his video "Sledgehammer" on what seemed like a never-ending loop, and radio fell in love with "In Your Eyes," "Don't Give Up" and "Big Time."
Q: You also gave this one an actual title.
It was named, yeah. That was a reluctant choice. In the old days I would go through my vinyl and identity each record by the picture, not by the title. I always liked that. In some ways, I'm just a visual person. It was the idea to just do away with titles. Give the pictures space to breathe and speak for themselves. But, of course, it caused confusion in the marketplace. The American record company, Geffen, got so fed up with me that they said they weren't going to release my fourth record unless I gave it some title. So, it was called Security in America and it had no title everywhere else in the world.
The next time out I decided to go for the anti-title. There's only two letters: So. It can be more a piece of graphic, if you like, as opposed to something with meaning and intention. And that's what I've done ever since.
In the English translations of Knut Hamsen's Growth of the Soil, the Norwegian characters often start declarations with "Ptro!" Presumably the translators didn't see fit or ability to translate that.
Maybe it's something about the phoneme itself that spreads the tic, virus-like.
Conversational speech is not fluid in the first place. If you get a careful transcription of it it's filled with false starts, do-overs, and so forth that you simply do not hear.
So much so that doing an accurate transcription is very hard, because you don't hear them while transcribing either.
So so as a phenomenon is a result of careful speech. Otherwise it would not be heard.
There's a classical musical piece named "Of" that starts musically with "of" in morse code.
"Sort of" is the new "exactly".
So say we all!
I think it's just a verbal (very occasionally written) throat clearing mechanism. All the advantages over "Well," "Um," "Like" are valid, but they are all just substitutes for spitting a stream of tobacco juice into a spittoon.
Ah, so. Confucius feels less confused.
So, what at this point, does it matter?
Can we get some analysis on ending (spoken) sentences with ",right?"...
It is having its moment right now.
So this is how Jeb starts losing Althouse . . .
So sue me, you know.
Lines on the Death of Chairman Mao
So.
Farewell then
Chairman Mao.
You are the
Last of the
Great revolutionary
Figures. You
And I
Had little in
Common
Except that
Like me
You were a poet.
[...]
—E. J. Thribb
I don't mind "So". I've noticed my husband using it, and have caught myself doing it as well. As long as it isn't overused I think it is fine. Being hypercritical of speech patterns is as annoying to me as the verbal tics themselves.
So build me up (build me up) Buttercup, don't break my heart
Seamstresses often start their sentences with the word "Sew".
I guess we go after them next.
I am Laslo.
why does Pharoah always have those nice polished concrete floors. It looks so much like a Hollywood studio.
Well, there is the programming logic of "If....Then."
The people I hear using "so" — for example, in talks at the law school — seem to be processing the question. I feel like the meaning is: I heard your question and it's causing me to picture a somewhat different question that it would serve you well to hear answered and I want you to realize that I respect and honor the question you've put and I'm reimagining it as the question the Better You would have asked.
And, reading that, I realize that the tone is: I can see that I'm on a higher level here, and I will now try to reach you where you appear to be without seeming condescending.
I doubt that "so"-sayers are as cognizant as that, Professor. It really is a tic.
Consider improvising blues on the piano. The fingers naturally fall on the blue notes, and sometimes resolve very quickly, automatically. That's comparable to starting a sentence with "well" or "so". It doesn't merit musicological analysis.
I note the abundance of "look" in politicians responses to any question as the bridge word between blah blah blah answers to focus on my agenda and talking points. Usually said immediately after the end sounding word in question answer deflecting answer as a way to forestall editing and keep talking.
So, my favorite use of "So," is as the first word of Heaney's "translation" of Beowulf. It actually appealed to me so much that I finished the entire thing, a first for me. (I suppose it's just possible that the quality of the rest of the work had something to do with that, but that speculation would, you know, be Off Topic, now, wouldn't it? Neh?)
drywilly: Few things get on my wrong side so quickly as a politician leading with "Look,".
The connotation is: "Look, you fool, I've explained this before but you were too dim to get it..."
Or more briefly: "Look, shut up and listen to MY point now."
You want to address a recalcitrant 3-year-old that way? Fine.
I perceive the recent overuse of So in the workplace to start a sentence as if the user assumes you were involved in a prior conversation. Unfortunately, I think the speaker in these cases should be saying, "Excuse me, do you have a moment?"
I knew a guy who started about 20% of his sentences with "at the end of the day."
At the end of the day, a banana costs a buck.
At the end of the day, Clinton got blown.
At the end of the day, the day ends at about 6:00PM.
Peter Gabriel's album So was ahead of its time
Ann Althouse said...
The people I hear using "so" — for example, in talks at the law school — seem to be processing the question. I feel like the meaning is: I heard your question and it's causing me to picture a somewhat different question that it would serve you well to hear answered and I want you to realize that I respect and honor the question you've put and I'm reimagining it as the question the Better You would have asked.
So, so saved a whole lot of words?
A friend's young daughter now frequently starts her sentences with "Basically," a verbal tic I remember from my own childhood fifty years ago. It's cute from a child, tiresome from an adult.
"Also Sprach Zarathustra" is a good example. The usual English translation is "Thus spoke [or spake] . . . ." "Thus" connects what the speaker is about to say to what he/she just previously said. That's why it's so grating when it's used to begin the answer to a question, which is how I've become conscious of the usage. Althouse's translations of "so" (at 9:40 and 9:42 am) seem about right to me, and illustrate why the usage is grating.
On the other had "So let it be written, so let it be done" is perfectly appropriate for an absolute monarch. Much better than "We are not amused."
Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf starts out with the word so:
So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by
And the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness
We have heard of these princes heroic campaigns
There's an interesting passage in his introduction explaining why:
Conventional renderings of hwæt, the first word of the poem, tend towards the archaic literary, with ‘lo’, ‘hark’, ‘behold’, ‘attend’ and – more colloquially – ‘listen’ being some of the solutions offered previously. But in Hiberno-English Scullion-speak, the particle ‘so’ came naturally to the rescue, because in that idiom ‘so’ operates as an expression that obliterates all previous discourse and narrative, and at the same time functions as an exclamation calling for immediate attention. So, ‘so’ it was:
So there you go. If you're tired of so, there's 'hark' or 'Behold!', maybe somebody could start a trend.
Say, you mugs, I'm tryin' a bring back startin' sentences with "say", whaddaya say?
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