So, is there a new use of so?

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Jan 2, 2006, at 2:36 PM, Jason Norris wrote:

> Lately, I've been noticing an interesting use of the word "so," and
> was wondering where it might come from? I've heard it more from
> students and only within the last few years.
>
>   Example: A woman walks in and says, "So I was trying find a
> parking spot yesterday when it started raining..."
>
>   ... The second use I've heard is from comedians. "So these three
> public radio hosts were talking about the weather one day..." (Or
> something funny).

i use it all the time myself, and i believe i've used it for decades.

in the examples above it announces that some new discourse chunk is
beginning; in both examples that chunk is a narrative (personal
narrative in the first case, joke in the second).  it's also a kind
of attention-getting device.

some people use it at the very beginning of a talk, where it says
"i'm starting now".  jim mccawley used to use it this way, and he
also used "ok" with the same function.  those uses were unfamiliar
enough to me that they caught my attention.  but starting stories
with "so" is entirely natural for me.

back in july, i spent a fair amount of time looking though short
stories and novels for ones beginning with a coordinator ("and",
"but", or "so", in particular).  (this task was suggested by geoff
pullum, who was asking for a colleague.)  no luck.  even the very
experimental writers, and those famous for beginning in medias res,
pretty much use conventional beginnings: "the", "I", proper names,
"in", etc.

i didn't look at *all* the fiction in my collection, but i looked at
a lot of it.

if you're going to try this at home, kids, be warned that it's
incredibly tempting to read on past that first word, especially for
favorite fiction you haven't gone back to in some time.  (i found
Grace Paley especially seductive this way.)

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)