Thread: So?

**hank moon** · 07-01-2012, 09:19 AM

So’ Pushes to the Head of the Line
The New York Times
May 23, 2010
By ANAND GIRIDHARADAS

So, this is about the word “so.”

If you speak English for work or pleasure, there is a fair chance that you’ve done it, too.

“So” may be the new “well,” new “um,” new “oh” and new “like.” No longer content to lurk in the middle of sentences, it has jumped to the beginning, where it can portend many things: transition, certitude, logic, attentiveness, a major insight.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, late last year: “So, it’s not only because we believe that universal values support human rights being recognized and respected, but we think that it’s in the best interest for economic growth and political stability. So we believe that.”

A dispatch on National Public Radio last month, in which a quarter of sentences began with “so”: “So it’s, I think, the fifth largest in the nation. So, but now that’s the population in general. So there are sort of two, there are two things that are circumstantial.”

A quotation in a report last month from Channel NewsAsia, based in Singapore: “So, what we’re doing is — elephants have had these migratory routes, basically like islands connecting parks between each other; they’ve got nowhere to move and people have encroached on them.

“So, we negotiate with the people to move from the land. So, what we do, we buy the land, build them houses off the corridors and give them exactly the same amount of arable land back.”

A recent news briefing by Vitaly Churkin, the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, in which 5 of 21 sentences began with “so”: “So, all those issues, we hope, will be addressed in the report of the secretary general.”