"So" is the new "well."

So, I wanted to write a post with that title after reaching my tipping point listening to 2 things yesterday: 1. Jeb Bush doing a Q&A at CPAC and beginning nearly every answer with "So...," and 2. The Supreme Court oral argument in EEOC v. Abercrombie & Fitch, with the lawyer for the government repeatedly beginning his answers with "So..." (and "So, Your Honor").

So, having conceived of that title for a blog post on a topic that has been stewing on the back burner of my mind, I googled those words and found them in a 2010 essay by Anand Giridharadas (in the NYT) called "Follow My Logic? A Connective Word Takes the Lead":

�So� may be the new �well,� �um,� �oh� and �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....

One can dredge up ancient instances of �so� as a sentence starter. In his 14th-century poem �Troilus and Criseyde,� Chaucer launched a verse with, �So on a day he leyde him doun to slepe. ...� But for most of its life, �so� has principally been a conjunction, an intensifier and an adverb.

What is new is its status as the favored introduction to thoughts, its encroachment on the territory of �well,� �oh,� �um� and their ilk.

Giridharadas traces the tic to 1990s-era Silicon Valley, where software-oriented minds visualize  "conversation as a logical, unidirectional process � if this, then that."

This logical tinge to �so� has followed it out of software. Compared to �well� and �um,� starting a sentence with �so� uses the whiff of logic to relay authority. Whereas �well� vacillates, �so� declaims....

Too phallocratic? Well... I'm saying "well" like a person of the 80s... consider the theory of the linguist Galina Bolden, who's done scholarly writing on the topic of "so":

She believes that �so� is also about the culture of empathy that is gaining steam as the world embraces the increasing complexity of human backgrounds and geographies. 

To begin a sentence with �oh,� she said in an e-mail message, is to focus on what you have just remembered and your own concerns. To begin with �so,� she said, is to signal that one�s coming words are chosen for their relevance to the listener.

The ascendancy of �so,� Dr. Bolden said, �suggests that we are concerned with displaying interest for others and downplaying our interest in our own affairs.�

And then there's Michael Erard, author of "Um...: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean":

The rise of �so,� he said via e-mail, is �another symptom that our communication and conversational lives are chopped up and discontinuous in actual fact, but that we try in several ways to sew them together � or �so� them together, as it were � in order to create a continuous experience.�

So it is written...