So have you noticed this new usage of "so" abroad
in the land? I call it a faux sequitor,
sort of the conversational equivalent of duct tape.
Consider the following, changed only slightly from an actual
morning news conversation:
TV Pundit : "Good
morning. You've written a book on the Spanish Civil War."
Author: "So I
argue that Ernest Hemingway was really snitching on his comrades."
Instead of returning the greeting or engaging in small talk,
our author goes straight for the big talk.
The money line, the bottom line, I believe it is called in your
earth-talk. "I won't waste your time," the
author seems to be faux-modestly saying.
Meanwhile, she is cloaking her pitch in the mantle of bogus inevitability:
"X therefore Y: The rain fell
steadily so the grass was soaked."
But this pundit’s X
does not lead to this author’s Y!
The antecedent "Spanish Civil War" dos not lead to
the inevitable conclusion "Ernest Hemingway snitched on his
comrades," a faux accusation, by
the way, which no one, including the hypothetical author, has ever to my
knowledge made.
But notice the
implications. "So" gets high-jacked from its legitimate usage as a
logical cause-effect conjunction or an intensifier ("He was so happy!")
to something downright sneaky. No causal
chain has been established, yet the speaker establishes unearned credibility by
the misappropriation of "So."
Yes, the speaker, for this slippery usage occurs almost
exclusively in speech. Speech makes implications
harder to freeze and analyze than does writing.
The conversation moves on. The
faux sequitor has done its low-down work.
Almost exclusively
in speech. The usage in fiction has an
old and honorable function, where the author is aiming at the same faux veracity. "So I'm standing outside the 7-11
drinking my coffee when this babe hauls off and socks me in the jaw."
But that's fiction.
It's legit. You're entering a
world where the only real danger is to not
be taken for a ride.
The speaker, I posit, is taking us on another kind of ride
entirely.
And what follows the faux sequitor of the so-sayers? Faux graciousness, evidently.
TV Pundit: “Thanks
for joining us today.”
Author: "Absolutely."
Absolutely???
"My pleasure," damn it. "You’re quite welcome.”
Where do these so-isms start? Where will they end? I am so
not going there.
So that’s another story.
