So It Turns Out That Everyone’s Starting Sentences With ‘So’

December 2, 2011, 4:00 am

Ernest Borgnine as Marty

So my favorite recent language article is a piece by Anand Giridharadas that appeared in The New York Times last year. It’s about the use of the word so in speech, specifically the custom of starting non-interrogatory sentences with so, specifically among academics and other members of the chattering classes. It’s apparently been around for a while. The article quotes Michael Lewis’s 1999 book, The New New Thing: ”When a computer programmer answers a question, he often begins with the word ‘so.”’ Giridharadas also says, intriguingly, “Microsoft employees have long argued that the ‘so’ boom began with them.”

I had been only dimly aware of this before reading Giridharadas; after reading him, I feel I cannot escape it. This may have to do with the fact that I’m an NPR power-listener, and so is to NPR interviewees as dude is to fraternity brothers. When Jason Barnes, an assistant professor of physics at the University of Idaho, appeared on Science Friday a couple of weeks ago, he used so 45 times in a relatively brief segment. (I got the transcript via Lexis-Nexis and counted them, that’s damn how).

Host Ira Flatow asked Barnes why he thought it would take “a couple of years” to find “an earthlike planet,” whereupon Hayes unleashed a veritable Milky Way of sos:

Ah, a great question. So [1] the technique that Kepler is using to find planets is called the transit technique. So [2] it’s actually very difficult to just go out with a telescope and take a picture of a planet around another star and the reason for that is that stars are really bright and they’re very far away from us, so [3] the planets that are near them are really close to them in the sky. So [4] if you try to take a picture of them, they’re sort of washed out by the glare of the star. …

So [5] our technique—we’re using a smarter way to find planets and that’s where we wait. As the planets orbit around their star, we wait until the planet passes between the star and earth. So [6] essentially then, if you were looking at the star, you’d see the shadow of the planet, so [7] we don’t actually see that shadow. …

The ones I’ve numbered 3, 4, 6 and 7 are traditional sos: a conjunction that implies a logical connection between what you’ve just said (in the beginning of the sentence or in the previous sentence) and what you’re about to say, a kind of homespun therefore or as a result. The new new thing, seen in 1, 2 and 5, is initiating a thought with the word—which is often followed, implicitly or explicitly, by the phrase it turns out that.

(There are other venerable sentence-starting sos. One of them kicks off a question: “So what do you want to do tonight, Marty?” Another mildly challenges the addressee, as the Byrds did when they sang, “So You Want to Be a Rock and Roll Star.”)

The new So stands at the end of a continuum of sentence-starters that begins with with Uh or Um (which say, “I didn’t really expect your question and am not sure how to answer it, so give me a minute”) and continues with Well (“I didn’t expect the question, but I’ve got an answer and here it comes”) and Oh (“You have presented me some new information; I have absorbed it.”) So says, “I understand the question and how it displays your incomplete knowledge of the subject. What follows is an answer that will help you comprehend what’s really going on and, in addition, suggest a unified theory of the reality.”

It’s a cool move; mad props to the anonymous Microsoft engineer who invented it. But by this point, it’s so over.

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MarjoryMunson

All we have to do is add “like” and we will have, “I’m so like commenting on this article now.” Might as well bundle them! Using so as a verbal challenge makes some sense, but most of the other uses are just verbal tics. Reminds me of one of my high school teachers who repeatedly used the phrase, “and the such like,” at the end of his sentences – I once counted 60 times within an hour class. When listeners become aware of these tics they tend to wince with each repetition and true communication suffers – you are listening for the next one and don’t want to lose count.
11227291

Lets add another… “I’m so like, YOU KNOW, commenting on this article now.”

fercho

If this was a problem only with high school kids it would be enough. But listen to Hillary Clinton next time she speaks about anything.

kmbct

This very issue got covered on Radio 4 in the UK last week. I’m not sure if this link will work outside the UK but here goes: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9644000/9644002.stm

The prescriptivist tone is pretty typical of John Humphrys, but it’s worth a listen…
mkruege

I hold the TV show “Friends” directly responsible for “so like.”
It’s a definite Chandlerism…and could it BE any more annoying?
dank48

So . . . ?
marcleavitt

So, I mean, like, umm, you know, uhh, yeah, OK, I see what yur sayin’
mstripling

It’s the kind of thing that either delights or drives a rhetorician nuts. And so it goes.
greeneyeshade

At least it’s not like Pearl S. Buck’s “Well, and…” which her characters in the classic “The Good Earth” use to begin declarations and which bears no relationship to what follows it.
http://twitter.com/Fritinancy Nancy Friedman

So “so” is finally catching up with “nu,” which has 19 documented definitions (according to Leo Rosten, “The Joys of Yinglish”)? Mazel tov!
vatican

So true I was just thinking about this last week. Another funny filler that some people have is “like” and about 5 years ago, I heard the longest like from a student who was lost. He asked me “Liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiike (about 2 seconds long), do you know where Professor so and so is?”
http://www.facebook.com/jeri.reilly Jeri Reilly

The most arresting use of “So” in my experience is as the first word of Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf. Hweat is translated as So and thus begins the poem: “So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by/ and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness.” As Heaney explains it: “so” operates as an expression which obliterates all previous discourse and narrative, and at the same time functions as an exclamation calling for immediate attention. So, there.
jlawler42

As so often happens when a linguist finds a promising phenomenon, they also find the footsteps of Geoff Pullum stretching ahead of them. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2579
pianiste

A comedian–I think it was Robert Klein–said that all he knew about the 1930s was that before anybody said anything, they said, “Say,…”

By the way, the pretentious academics’ equivalent of “So…” is “Thus…”
Steve Hall

Marjory beat me to it, but I must say, I prefer (by the tiniest of margins) “so” to “like” when it comes to unnecessary words. However, if both disappeared, I’d be happier, and the language would be better off for it.
duffybjp

“So are you to my thoughts as food to life…
duffybjp

“So are you to my thoughts as food to life…
aephirah

So…I am not sure if this is happening all over the U.S., but when I moved to the Southwest I found it odd that many Spanish-speakers will hold long conversations in Spanish where virtually the only English term used (repeatedly) is “so.” I am not just talking about people who are used to speaking “Spanglish”; I’ve heard this from well-educated professors for whom Spanish is their mother tongue. Since most of us automatically resort to our native language for fillers, this use of “so” intrigues me.
compliance12

I had a law clerk from Texas a few years back that asked why Midwesterners use “with” inappropriately, as in “I’m going to the store. Do you want to go with?” I had never noticed before that. Now I hear it all the time. So I can’t use “with” anymore. Then you took away my “um” and ”okay” and “like.” So just what words can we use to mask those milliseconds we need to think of what we really want to say?
_perplexed_

so?
dottyeyes

I first noticed the phenomenon while listening to podcasts of “The Moth.” Most raconteurs now begin their stories with “So.” I initially found this a little odd, as I always took “so” at the beginning of a sentence to mean “consequently.” When the very first word of the first sentence in a person’s story began with the equivalent of “Consequently,” I had a vague feeling that I was already missing something. But I am starting to get used to it starting with “So.” It seems sort of trendy or friendly, as if the storyteller had already clued us in on things.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Michael-Cary/100003244925120 Michael Cary

That being said, I mean the bottom line is, actually, it is what it is.
clar8017

Seamus Heaney talks about his choice of “So” in his translation of Beowulf. When he was working on the translation, he noted that he first needed to find a voice: “Without some melody sense or promised, it is simply impossible for a poet to establish the translator’s right of way into and through the text.” He found that melody in his “big-voiced” Irish relatives who spoke with simple weight and dignity.
Conventional renderings of the first word of the poem, he writes, tend toward the “archaic literary”: “lo,” “hark,” “behold, “attend,” and even the more colloquial “listen.” But Heaney, channeling the cadence of big-voiced men of Ulster, used “So.”

“‘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. The Spear-Danes in days gone by
and the kinds who ruled them had courage and greatness.
We have heard of those princes’ heroic campaigns.
— Clare Keefe Coleman
jodprov

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
http://twitter.com/sanchk Sanchit Kumar

So you don’t watch ‘So You Think You Can Dance’? The new use of ‘So’ may be overused in your opinion, but it’s popularity has been growing enough to permeate popular culture and become standard lexicon for many, much as ‘like’ has. So’s popularity will continue to grow. So just deal with it.

MarjoryMunson

It is a good idea NOT to become habituated into the slang of your day – it will make it possible for people to know how old you are some day when you may not want that to happen.

urbanexile

I cannot express with too much warmth my gratitude to Ben Yagoda for writing this article. The word “so”, particulary on NPR and TV interview shows to which I listen every day, has been irking me regularly for several years now. I cannot stand it. I see no point to it except for the following: In these days of media barrage and quick cuts, people have become intolerant of the golden quantity of Silence. Golden silence, the pregnant pause, the intake of breath (quick or slow), or the ever-popular “hmmmm” which indicates that one is thinking before speaking are all great options. These sounds like ”so” used meaninglessly come into being in a society known for INTERRUPTION: The speaker tries to maintain “the floor” as it were by continuing to make noise even when he has nothing yet to say.

No to so. Yes to silence.
Guest

THE EXPIRATION
by John Donne

SO, so, break off this last lamenting kiss,
Which sucks two souls, and vapours both away;
Turn, thou ghost, that way, and let me turn this,
And let ourselves benight our happiest day.
We ask none leave to love ; nor will we owe
Any so cheap a death as saying, “Go.”Go;
and if that word have not quite killed thee,
Ease me with death, by bidding me go too.
Or, if it have, let my word work on me,
And a just office on a murderer do.
Except it be too late, to kill me so,
Being double dead, going, and bidding, “Go.”

Source: Donne, John. Poems of John Donne. vol I. E. K. Chambers, ed. London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1896. 73.
awegweiser

“So” surely cannot be as common as “y’know”. Sometimes attached to “like I mean”.
zincsulfate

These sounds like Ferrous Sulfate “so” used meaninglessly come into being in a society
known for INTERRUPTION: The speaker Manganese Sulfate tries to maintain “the floor” as it
were by continuing to make noise even when he has nothing yet to say. magnesium sulfate
mcitguy

Just almost as annoying as . . . people who overuse ellipses . . . in their e-mails . . . blog postings . . . and other such places . . .
Jeroboam

I don’t think the predecessor of the discourse-initial ‘so’ being discussed here is hard to identify. It seems to me to be the very old and well established use of ‘so’ to begin a joke, as in “So this guy walks into a bar …”
jliedl

As an academic & parent to an almost university-age spawnling, I haven’t had to have this conversation because we’ve had parts of it along the way. Every time I’ve had a case of plagiarism, I discuss the issue in non-specific ways with the child unit because these are learning experiences.

I also raise the issue with my students every year: why we are so worked up about plagiarism and what they can do, right then, to avert the possibility they’ll find themselves up against the wall and panicky a few months later when the assignment is due or the exam is starting. Some listen but never all of them!
physioprof

“Using commercially available outlines rather than reading and using the books for the course is cheating.”

This seems like a really close case. Do you consider there to be anything wrong with using commercially available outlines/reading guides *in addition* to reading the books themselves? Incidentally, law students–who are assigned to read massive case books stuffed with reported court decisions–use so-called “hornbooks”, which contain outlines of the legal rules embodied in the case law and summaries of the cases. As far as I am aware, students openly use these study aids, and no law schools consider their use to be a violation of any ethical principle or rule.

tenured_radical

Not in addition, if the student really doesn’t understand. But using Spark Notes, or Cliff’s Notes for Spenser’s Faerie Queen, rather than reading the book, and then writing the paper as if they hadn’t used them? Yes, Because these outline offer interpretation as well as a plot summary, and If a student is selling those interpretations as his or her own, it’s cheating.

Oh yeah, and also they didn’t learn anything — which strikes as a big difference between how outlines might be used in different fields.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Terri-McReynolds/1227995632 Terri McReynolds

Hello educators!
Thank you for some additional insights to higher education and plagiarism. As an adult student returning to finish my BA, I have a couple questions regarding “idea plagiarism”

At 46 I’ve been exposed to MANY ideas, concepts, and theories over the years, and, of course, I’ve formed opinions and tweaked those ideas to fit my personal opinion. I’ve not kept a list of those articles or resources. Why would I? At the time I had no intention of returning to school nor had I anticipated that I would need to cite those ideas which gave birth to my current perspectives.

I feel I’m a fairly decent writer. I form my own outlines, opinions and cite ideas, data, opinions, etc. that are new to me now. Am I in violation of plagiarism if I learn an author and I share the same values, opinions and ideas if I don’t cite the author?
cdjunkjunk

LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS PIECE, as well as the comments! Thanks to all!

Know all that it will make my wife’s weekend to feel your solidarity. She teaches AP English to seniors at a well-known school in a high-profile, affluent community, and you’d never believe the time, energy and emotion that cheating and plagiarism have extracted from her dear soul over the last year. But she fights on!

(And we’re gathering fabulous fodder for a book we’re writing on this and other matters that compromise public education on the ground level.)

My favorite parental response (paraphrased): “If my child had in fact cheated, he would never have done it so inexpertly/obviously/clumsily/stupidly.”
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=8502451 Chris Heard

“I am a [sic] far better at research than an undergraduate is at covering up plagiarism.”

I put it to my students this way: “If you can Google it, I can Google it.”
http://derrinyet.tumblr.com/ derrinyet

You must have some unimpressive students, otherwise this is a pretty presumptuous statement:

“I am a far better at research than an undergraduate is at covering up plagiarism.”

tenured_radical

Hey, way to slam everyone all at once! But what you said makes no durn sense.

http://derrinyet.tumblr.com/ derrinyet

Sorry, I can elaborate.

You claim that none of your plagiarist students can outmaneuver your research prowess. Maybe in the case of plagiarists who are stupid and lazy and just trying to get out of doing work, that’s true. But there’s a subset of plagiarists/cheaters who are easily capable of doing the work but prefer to mess with you. (These people aren’t imagined, I went to high school with several. The cheaters in my state university were typically of the boring kind.)

It’s easy to say ‘cheating-is-wrong-I-will-crush-you,’ but it’s more interesting to ask what engenders plagiarism and other forms of cheating. If it’s sheer laziness, then sure, give them the axe. But I would wager that there are other people currently leading ‘honest’ lives who at one point or another cheated in school, which suggests to me that it’s not a failure of some innate moral compass but rather a different systemic problem. Some people think it’s not ‘real life,’ or perhaps instructors fail to engender respect for the material or for the practice of scholarship overall.

How does one fix these problems? Maybe it’s too Polyannaish, but I’d like to imagine a university where people don’t cheat – both out of confidence in the strength of their own ideas and out of respect for the intellectual community. Maybe that will never come to pass, but surely there’s a better use of your time than ferreting out plagiarists, and killing them off one-by-one will never address the reasons that they exist in the first place.

siobhancurious

I particularly love the Coke bottle technique – seriously, this is easier than studying? I have posted about your post here: http://siobhancurious.com/2011/12/12/more-ways-to-cheat-because-wheres-the-fun-in-doing-the-work/
http://www.facebook.com/people/Anne-Massey/1552020725 Anne Massey

I love the comments and the experiences that have been shared. I sympathize with the graduate student plight. As a grade student teaching an intermediate Spanish course, I gave an assigment asking students to describe their family. One student who, for the record, struggled with present tense, suddenly had Medieval forms of subjunctive embedded in the paper. As I read, I realized that I recognized the phrasing. After a few minutes in front of my shelves of Spanish literature, I realized that the student had plagiarised segments of Lazarillo de Tormes, a reknowed work by an anonymous author that is often cited as the first novel in Spanish. Book in hand, I confronted the student, who spent half an hour denying the accusation. Finally, frustrated, I pointed out that unless he was channeling the 16th century author (in which case we might both be rich), this was plagiarism. Of course, there was a review board, but the only outcome if a student was found to have cheated was expulsion. I took what I had found to the supervisor for the TA’s who told me to give the student a 0 and not to purse it further. The incident still bothers my sense of ethics, but I felt that without the backing of the supervisor I would be rather on a raft afloat in the ocean and in danger of drowning in the process.
jc100

Totally…
jc100

Totally…
http://twitter.com/Emdashes Emdashes

I hear “So” a lot as a single-word sentence, much as dank48 is using it below. “So…?” The s is drawn out and sibilant, mean-girl style (though men and women both do it), often accompanied by an exaggeratedly quizzical look and ironically outstretched hands. It serves the same function as “And I should care why?”
BroncoBro

Using “so” to start a conversational thought is like old fashioned, you know. I mean, like, who talks that way, OK? My mom started doing it last month and it’s so, like, weird, you know?
bossylittlething

Thanks for the post, historiann. What a f^(ked situation. You have just convinced me to never use blue-books again! Also, thanks TR for the Flavia link. Yes, plagiarism can break your heart…
historiann

It might break your heart, but mostly, it just pisses me off. As TR suggests, it’s a completely avoidable screw-up, and as you note, it’s very time consuming for the faculty to prosecute and follow up on.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=8502451 Chris Heard

Speaking of syllabi, the administration at my school has developed a strange practice over the last few years. They send around boilerplate text and recommend that we professors cut-and-paste certain policy paragraphs into our syllabi. One of those boilerplate paragraphs concerns intellectual property and asserts copyright of the syllabus … there seems to me something self-contradictory about that!
tenured_radical

“Taking advantage of someone else’s efforts to select materials on a
subject is NOT cheating – it’s called using a bibliography. The fact
that it might be an informal bibliography (a bunch of stuff on someone’s
desk) rather than a formally published one doesn’t change the ethics.”

Disagree! When something has been published, it is in the public domain, and available for use. In fact the uber-ethical author will credit the author of a bibliography or review essay whose work then made her own work possible. But using someone else’s unpublished notes, research or any other materials without permission or credit? It’s stealing, pure and simple, whether you are an undergraduate caught short at the last minute or a Ph.D. Why do you think acknowledgments often include conversations and informal comments made when a paper was given, or so-and-so who generously shared her research on X?