So, to answer a question …
Tim Beaupré, a reader in PointeClaire, wrote to me this month with an astute observation: “I’ve noticed in the last couple of years the use of ‘So’ as the first word in the response to a question. It comes particularly from very well-educated people with backgrounds in the sciences. I pointed this out to my good friend, a medical doctor, and he had no idea he had adopted the new usage. His wife, also a medical doctor, only moments later used ‘So’ in response to a question I posed.”
To hear examples of the habit, Beaupré suggested that I listen to Quirks and Quarks, the weekly science program on CBC Radio. I did, and the results were fascinating.
On a recent show, four of the five scientists being interviewed were men. Only one of the men, a Canadian physicist, began an answer with that particular word: “So in total, about 500 kilotonnes of energy were released ...” By contrast, three of his responses started with “Right” and four with “Well.” Indeed all of the scientists on that day’s program used “Well ...” at the start of at least one answer, including a young Australian woman completing a doctorate in New York. She alone said “So” more frequently than “Well,” as in her remark, “So we found it in a fossil site in northwestern Queensland.”
Not much evidence there to support Beaupré’s suggestion. But then, on the Quirks and Quarks website, I found the audio for a show that was broadcast in early October, featuring a Canada Research Chair at the University of Alberta named Jillian Buriak. And nearly all of her answers began in the same way: “So the big crystals take a lot of energy …” “So the way we’ve been doing it …” “So the next step is the development part …” She seemed almost incapable of responding to the interviewer’s questions with any other word.
Why and how did this verbal trait become so prevalent? A New York Times column published in May 2010 was the first mainstream article to draw attention to the word. “So it is widely believed,” wrote Anand Giridharadas, “that the recent ascendancy of ‘So’ began in Silicon Valley. … In the software world, it was a tic that made sense. In immigrant-filled technology firms, it democratized talk by replacing a world of possible transitions with a catch-all. And ‘So’ suggested a kind of thinking that appealed to problem-solving software types: conversation as a logical, unidirectional process — if this, then that.” The first example in the column came from the mouth of Hillary Clinton, and the only linguist whom Giridharadas quoted was a woman named Galina Bolden. Yet Giridharadas did not suggest that “So” may be especially common among women.
I don’t have enough hard evidence to prove the point, but I’m willing to go out on a limb and say that I hear this opening “So” more often on the lips of women than of men. Or at least, I hear women begin a professional answer with “So” more often than I do their male counterparts. It’s possible that men use “So” more often in casual, humorous contexts (“So a cat, a dog and a kangaroo walk into a bar ...”) and less often in professional ones. Bolden, the linguist quoted in the Times article, believes that “So” reflects a culture of empathy — the word “suggests that we are concerned with displaying interest for others and downplaying our interest in our own affairs.” I’m not sure I agree — although it’s worth recalling that scientists and novelists alike have often found empathy to be more common among women than men.
If “So” embodies a concern for other people, it’s a concern that must be making itself felt at a subconscious level, for few if any speakers are aware of their own verbal tics. I once squirmed with embarrassment when listening to a radio interview I’d given because, to my horror, I found that nearly every one of my answers began with “Well …” I had no idea that I talked in this manner. But perhaps my generation tends to do this, giving ourselves a few extra moments before we make a pronouncement, whereas younger people of both sexes prefer an opening that is more decisive, more empathetic, or both.
So tell me what you think.