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?
