Anne Curzan has the fancy title of the Geneva Smitherman Collegiate Professor of English Language and Literature, Linguistics, and Education at the University of Michigan. In 2024 she published a book titled Says Who? A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words. There is a Google Books preview through page 26. Beginning on page 250 she discusses use of so:
“How did you feel about that initial so to start the previous sentence? Many of you likely didn’t notice, and there’s no reason you would or should. It’s only the second time I used a sentence-initial so in the chapter, which doesn’t seem excessive in that distracting, now-I-can’t-notice-anything-else kind of way. But I hear from a lot of people who are noticing a lot of sentence-initial so in speech right now. What’s up with that?
In speech, so can function not only as a coordinating conjunction or coordinator (like and, but, or, nor, for, yet), but also as a discourse marker. Discourse markers are those little words and phrases that don’t carry ‘content’ in terms of the literal meaning of the utterance but instead do interpersonal work. We often think of them as empty words, just filling up space. And sometimes they do just that! For example, if we’re trying to remember something or we’re not ready to give up the floor and want to indicate that we’re not finished, we may say, ‘uh, uh…’ That’s a way to signal to others that they should not jump in yet. And like can certainly act like a filler, if we say something like ‘Like, um, you may not want to say that.’ (Like can do many other things, including serve as a preposition as it did in the previous sentence to introduce that bit of speech – see chapter 9.)
Discourse markers can help position the speaker and the listener in different ways. If I add a you know in my sentence, I may be seeking to create connection with you as a listener. If I say, ‘I mean, that’s my perspective,’ I may be using (unconsciously) I mean to minimize my authority, to create more room for your thoughts. And linguist Galina Bolden at Rutgers University has argued that the discourse marker so is a ‘lean in’ way to start an utterance. It suggests that I’m eager to tell you what I’m about to say or that I see what I’m saying as directly following up on your statement or question. By contrast, well can work in more of a ‘lean back’ way to start an utterance.
Discourse markers also function like traffic signals, indicating to a listener what is about to happen. One of my favorite examples is the use of well or um to signal a ‘dispreferred response.’ What does that mean? Let’s imagine that I need to tell you something I think you don’t want to hear. You ask me, ‘Are you still going to be able to come to dinner tonight?’ And I say, ‘Well…’ or ‘Um…’ I probably don’t even have to continue. I have already prepared you that I’m about to say no. This is why it can lead to miscommunication if I then say yes. You might fairly respond, ‘Are you sure? It doesn’t sound like you want to come.’ I have sent mixed signals with my discourse marker! New work on what is being called ‘backstory so’ suggests that so is also preparing a listener for a response that may be longer than they were expecting – and this is rapidly on the rise.
So can direct conversational traffic in a couple of other ways. It is a way we start stories. When I hear you start with ‘So, as I was driving to work this morning…,’ I may settle in to hear a story. So can also signal the equivalent of paragraph breaks in a spoken narrative or explanation.”
And on page 80 she discusses use of like:
“With your wordie hat on, first strive to disentangle and understand the many uses of like, so that decisions you might make about one use don’t spill over into others. Like as both preposition and conjunction is well-established as standard usage, in speech and writing. Many other uses of like are more informal, but informal doesn’t mean ungrammatical.
If you’re someone who worries that you use like more than you would like to, it’s likely filler and focuser like on your radar. Many of us have discourse markers we use frequently enough in speech that listeners may start to notice them. When I discuss this issue with students in my course on how conversations work, they have sometimes noted that I use a lot of ‘right?’ when I teach. Guilty! Is it overuse? There’s no clear line between use and overuse – one question to ask ourselves is whether we think a discourse marker is becoming so frequent that it detracts from the message. You can try recording yourself when you’re presenting or even in casual conversation (if the others participating in the conversation agree, I hope!) if you want to become more aware of your own speech patterns. That said, remember that discourse markers such as like, right, you know, um, and the like (yet another use of like!) do conversational work, and the goal doesn’t have to be zero. As listeners, we should be aware of judging anyone’s intelligence, competence, or worthiness of being listened to based on patterns of discourse marker use.”
An article by Stanley Schacther et al. in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology for 1991, on pages 362 to 367 and titled Speech Disfluency and the Structure of Knowledge found that Columbia professors used one to six uhs per minute. I blogged about it in a post on September 15, 2011 titled Should listening to a speech be more like eating a hot dog, or driving down a road?
