One of my cow-orkers starts virtually every sentence with “Hey”.
“Hey Dr. Jackmannii, everyone in the department called in sick today.”
“Hey, the processor broke down again.”
“Hey, we can’t find your slides.”
A mildly annoying verbal tic. But not as bad as the Ohio Valleyism which drops the words “to be” in a sentence.
“This needs fixed.”
“So” is a stronger filler word than most other filler words and it is easy to see why its use would become more popular. Most often however a spoken communication is stronger yet when using few filler words. Moreover using a single filler word repetitively draws attention to the fact that filler words are being used … are needed. Posts here illustrate how distracting that can become.
“So” has its place as a solid filler for when a filler is necessary tool (hopefully infrequently); mixing it up with a few other choices makes it stronger yet.
Jackmannii I wonder if that “Hey” is best thought of a casual version of “Excuse me”?
Yes. There’s a lot of audible and mental noise in people’s environment and “so” tells them that you, with your specific tones and speech patterns, are about to speak.
There is the placeholder “so,” the continuation “so” that gets the story back on track after an aside or interruption (“So there I was, naked as a jaybird.”), and the Minnesotan, Canadian (a lot of linguistic crossover there), and Yiddish “So” that precedes a restatement of what the other party is saying in a passive-aggressive attempt to say you find it ridiculous (So what you’re saying is that there are scientists in Canada?). “Um” can also be used that way; I have used both all of my life.
I’m sure that some people do this, but it’s not the main use I hear, or at least, not the main use I notice. “Well,” and especially “um,” connote a bit of uncertainty about what he’s going to say next, but “so” doesn’t seem to do that, and if you watch the show from my OP (available on Rose’s web site), you can see that in several cases, he’ll even use the “so” after he’s begun speaking, but to begin a brand new thought, rather than to connect thoughts.
I think maybe it’s replacing “Basically,” rather than “um.” The speaker knows exactly what he’s going to say, and he’s letting you know that he’s going to try to put things in terms that even you can understand.
I have no problem with “so” as a sentence starter etc, and notice myself using it (just after the fact), but what irritates me is starting the answer to a direct question with “So.” To me that particular usage makes no sense, sounds like this:
Q: Can you tell me what you saw that night?
A: Therefore, I was looking out the window…
Hah! I’ve done this for years; I bet I could go back to when I joined the board and find an example early on. I’m not stopping anytime soon. #sorrynotsorry 
The filler words discussion reminds me of the discussion-based South American Fiction class I took at uni. One day the professor started class by announcing that our entire class had somehow been infected with “kindas”. For whatever reason, every.single.student was using “kinda/kind of” as THE filler word and it was driving our Prof insane.
With that, he placed a service bell in front of him and said that every time he heard “kinda”, he would ding the bell and you had to keep going. Say it again? Ding!
He wasn’t lying! It was a pretty effective way to break the habit, though.
THIS is the usage of so which is becoming more common now, and THIS is the usage which is annoying. The otherwise informative piece from Language Log doesn’t seem to differentiate that from the regular way that people begin a topic with so.
I think we should avoid the imprecise term “filler word,” as it carries implications which are not really about the function(s) under discussion here. Discourse markers are what we’re talking about, and discourse markers have various functions–not just as placeholders.
In fact, I don’t think the function here is as a placeholder, but the problem is that there seems to be a new and distinct way of beginning a turn with so, and it’s not the one described in the Language Log article, either. It’s what TreacheriousCretin is pointing out. The particular function described in that article does not address answers to direct questions at the onset of a new topic
In other words, the recency issue is that this is happening more and more in journalistic interviews, and at the beginning of a topic. This is NOT the affective function which the Language Log article describes.
My theory is this: One environment where this has always been the norm is college lectures. The professor walks into the lecture hall, and is taking up a new “chapter” in what is perceived to be one single topic (the topic of the whole course). So, in order to underscore that today’s lecture is just a continuation of the the same topic we were engaged in the last time we met, and which was artificially interrupted by the arbitrary structure (time blocks) of college classes, the professor makes a point of beginning the lecture with the word so. It’s academic shorthand for saying, “Taking up where we just left off…”
So what these interviewees in the media are essentially doing in these interviews (especially people in the sciences, it seems), is presenting themselves as professors giving a lecture. They’ve heard their professors do this at the beginning of lectures, and they’ve overgeneralized it as something that the “knowledgeable” interlocutor does at the beginning of any turn which is the answer to a direct question. In other words, they do this (they begin all their answers with so) because they think that’s how “smart people” are supposed to talk in interviews.
BTW, there was a thread on this before, and Harry Shearer does a regular (weekly) review of the more egregious examples of this.
It is an interviewee not listening to the question but only the answer in their head.
Exactly.
Yes, that’s one way of putting it, though I would add that it’s not solely a question of self-absorption. These people are altering the way they would otherwise naturally speak because they want to sound more authoritative.
I agree. In this usage, “so” is not as semantically empty as a true filler. The pattern I’ve seen–though I have no statistics to support this–is that it is most commonly used in a reply as a marker indicating that you’re going to begin with background information.
Note the sentences quoted by the OP:
“So I was number two at the CIA…”
“So I was in Amman, Jordan…”
In both, “so” marks the beginning of context information. I believe this is also consistent with the professorial usage you noted.
I’m not sure your interpretation of the usage in interviews as an attempt to establish authority fully explains the increase in frequency. I suspect that it is, in part, a reflection of the increased volume of news; interviewees feel a greater need to establish context to distinguish themselves from any of the dozen other talking heads that will be interviewed on the subject, or–when they are interviewed on many subjects–to relate the answer to a particular subject.
The pattern is also self-reinforcing to some extent. As people listen to interviews in which the interviewees employ this usage, they internalize the idea that this is how interview replies are supposed to be. It becomes part of the “interview” register.
That’s why it grates me - The implicit continuation.
Sounds reasonable to me.
As Stringbean just mentioned, one often gets the impression that the interviewee is scanning an internal list of possible responses and making their selection.
guizot point well made. “So” can be effectively used to communicate picking up a conversation thread that had been interupted, or to imply that the following is a logical extension from what had preceded it. (As you use it, twice, appropriately, in your post.) Sometimes to imply that what follows is the solution to the conundrum presented immediately before: “So we took the burnt over spiced fish, called it blackened, served it, and the rest is history!” And in a related way it is also used, effectively, to start or moreso to continue, with context setting, a new chapter in an oral story, preferably one with some adventure elements: “So there we were, surrounded on all sides by enemy forces, armed only with bubble gum and nail clippers …” as Balance notes.
The issue is that it is being used in an overgeneralized fashion and over often … in places where a discourse marker is not needed and adds nothing and where a “Well” would have served the same function. Its being used more broadly would be only mildly annoying if not for its excesive use.
Maybe it is related to the speakers putting on academic airs, being poseurs of sorts, as you seem to be proposing … not sure.
So you think “so” is losing its meaning?
Different usage, and no. (Though ISWYDT.)
I notice it often on NPR. Now I can’t not notice it and it bugs me too!
I know, right?
Yeahhhh no.
It appears to be the newest smarty-pants thing to do. It is very annoying. I too have noticed it quite a bit on NPR, along with much more vocal fry. I think i was born at the wrong time… I would have been better off before the advent of the internet, or tv, or the radio, or movies, or the printed word…
bah humbug!
