Sunday Focus: Language

     Is it my imagination? Or is U.S. suddenly infected by a virus that causes people to begin sentences with this word:

     Listen carefully to people answering questions...on radio, TV, in person, and note how many of the answers start with the word so.

     So, when i started writing this post, I googled the issue to see if there were other people writing about it. Turns out I'm about a year behind, or more! The questions about "so" are, well, so 2014...or 2013:

A USA Today story from 2/14:

So… have you noticed the growing trend in people using the word “so” to start and end sentences? Linguists agree that the word is “trending,” but what role does the two-letter word actually play in our language? 

 Dictionary.com was onto the trend a year earlier, in a posting in August of 2013, and they suggest it goes back earlier than that:

Over the last few years, lovers of language have casually observed an increase in speakers beginning sentences with the word so. What are some new ways in which so is being used in colloquial speech, and what cues do these utterances send to listeners?

The Chronicle of Higher Education was even earlier to the debate, with a posting in December of 2011, and they suggest it goes back further than that!

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.” 

So, what do you think? 













[UPDATE: Terry Gross on NPR featured the "so" story on Fresh Air on September 3, 2015, a month after this posting. Terry---are you a visitor here?]
[Sunday Focus is a regular feature of www.TimLennox.com]