In defence of "So..." and other clichés

Via a link by a commenter @ Basic Instructions, I become aware of this little snippet from the BBC "Today" Programme on Radio 4.

Regular readers may be aware that I have, on occasion, used "So" to start a blog post, which means that I perhaps have an interest in answering back the criticisms of the tendency that are articulated by Messrs Rentoul and Humphrys. That is to say, I think there is a specific and useful purpose to the way in which "so" tends to start sentences.

After hypothesising that it comes "from the internet - comments on blogs" and possibly from "imitating academics' usage", Mr Rentoul expresses his explanations for its use as:

• Drawing attention to what is being said
• Draws the listener into membership of a private club, by implying a continued discussion and assuming shared knowledge

While I think that these have some weight, I think that Mr Rentoul has missed the actual structure of what is being said in a lot of examples. Mr Humphrys and Mr Rentoul laugh about their made-up examples of redundant usage, but I couldn't see those as realistic forms, unless you continued the statement further. In the example clips played at the beginning of the snippet it was also hard to gauge, because we didn't hear much of what followed the "so".

I looked back at some of my most recent posts beginning with "so", and looked at the way in which I was using the term, and considered whether that reflected what I think I hear in other people's usage. I think it does in a lot of cases. I think one or two of John Humphry's clips on the radio programme hinted at it as well.

Here's what I think is happening: "So" has effectively moved from being a conjunction to being an introduction.

Messrs Humphrys and Rentoul laugh about people saying, "What's the weather like?" "So, it's sunny at the moment." I don't think I've ever heard that usage. What I tend to hear/read is usage like this:

"So, it's sunny today. I think I'll go for a walk."

Effectively, this is a reordering of, "It's sunny today, so I think I'll go for a walk."

Sometimes you get repetition of "so", like this: "So, it's sunny today so I think I'll go for a walk".

"So" becomes an indicator of a preamble to the main point. The main point in the above examples, is "I think I'll go for a walk". The preamble, giving the context for that statement, is "it's sunny today". "So", in this usage, therefore has a meaning similar to "given that" or "because".

The only example from my earlier posts that doesn't seem to match this pattern is the one about dreams, where the real preamble/context element got placed inside brackets instead of as part of the opening sentence (a better construction might have been, "So I was nervous about my upcoming interview, and had a weird dream. I'd like to describe it to you.")

I suspect that this is also the way in which "so" is used in academics' speech. After receiving a question, the academic introduces their answer with the word "so" and the basis for the answer - the underlying principles on which the full explanation will depend.

There is an exception to this classification, which is what might be called the "chat-up 'so'", which is typically, a longer, drawn-out word, thus:

"Soooo, are you having fun tonight?"

This I think falls into the category of "drawing attention" that Rentoul picked out, and I think it generally works still as an indicator of a preamble, though this is like a conversational preamble - it alerts the other person that you wish to speak, and gives them time to switch their attention to you and it introduces the opening question or comment that is designed to start a conversation without necessarily being a direct part of that conversation.

For instance:

"So, do you think it will rain today?"

"It looks like it'll be fine."

"Cool. How about we go to the beach?"

The aim of the conversation is to discuss plans for the day. While the weather question might impact on those plans, it isn't the central theme, it's used to open a conversation. In my mind, I read the above example as hinting (through the use of the "so") that the first speaker feels nervous around the second speaker either because the second speaker has higher social status, or because they don't know each other well yet, or because this is actually first speaker asking second speaker on a date.

All-in-all, I think that makes the sentence-opening "so..." a useful part of speech, and a helpful qualifier in written language.

***

Mr Rentoul is identified as the author of a book called "The Banned List: A Manifesto Against Jargon and Cliche". However, jargon and clichés come into being for very sound and useful reasons.

Jargon is simply language that has developed within a community with common frequent references that need to be made. Spelling out the description each time becomes laborious and unnecessary within that community. For instance, within the BDSM community, "safeword", "vanilla", "CBT", "CFNM", "top", "bottom", "twue" etc. Of course, some terms have other uses outside the community (for instance, you don't want to get your cognitive behaviour therapy mixed up with your cock and ball torture!) Some are unintelligible to those who aren't in that community. If you don't need the terms, you generally don't learn them! It's the same for any trade or profession, or subculture. Does it serve to "exclude" people, as suggested by Humphrys and Rentoul towards the end of the clip? Of course it does, and I think some people do do that deliberately. More often, though, I think use of a community or profession/trade's jargon comes about because the user is used to doing so and forgets to shift gear for the non-member audience. Jargon is needed, and because it is needed, it can't be eradicated and people will, by mistake or on purpose, use it in general speech and not just specialised speech.

Clichés have a habit of becoming clichés because they are useful, and they are common tropes or circumstances that need to be expressed. Some words, or word-combinations, happen to fit those feelings or needs really well. Those words or phrases then become clichés through being used for that reason.

Mr Rentoul identifies "Any time soon" and "moving forwards" as particular pet-hates, but I can't think of another way to say "any time soon" that is as succinct and carries the same meaning. Thesaurus-brain says you could have "at some point in the near future" to mean the same thing, but that's a bit of a mouthful compared to the snappy, short, and instantly understandable "any time soon". If there is a problem with "any time soon", it is only that its shortness can make the person seem short-tempered: given the wrong inflection, it sounds like an accusation. Similarly, "moving forwards" is a cliché because it expresses something pretty fundamental: the idea of a project or situation progressing in the near future. It can say "we're in the middle of something and we need to work out what to do next", or it can say, "We've completed phase 1, so what's phase 2 and how do we start on it?" This makes it very useful indeed!

Clichés can be the product of lazy thought and lazy writing or speech. But they are very useful structures, so avoiding them often just becomes clumsy. Often, when the aim is the most effective and immediate communication, cliché is the best option, especially if you are confident that other people around you are familiar with the cliché. (This is not the same as "indirect language" because those forms are just a subset of cliché. Many, if not most, clichés are actually presented in direct language.)

So, moving forwards, can anyone see us losing these speech forms any time soon?