So everyone is saying ‘so’ only so they seem clever!

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

So a while back one of the contestants on Frank Skinner’s ‘Room 101’ chose the word ‘so’ as her pet hate. So she didn’t mean the word ‘so’ in every use and context, only the way that people had started to use it at the beginning of a sentence, in response to a question.

By adding ‘so’ in this fashion she reckoned they sounded incredibly patronising.

Unfortunately I can’t for the life of me remember who that contestant was but being a boring old scribbler from way back who’s just a trifle on the sad side of obsessive about words, I recall perking up like cats ears after a clatter in the kitchen when alerted to the word’s new usage.

So ever since then all I can hear is people answering questions with sentences starting with ‘so’. It’s driving me crazy. So at first I tried to put it down to being simply that phenomenon when you think of something and then can’t stop spotting it.

Trouble is, I know it’s not that. This new ‘so’ is almost pandemic. Everybody on the radio and TV who believes they possess a tiny piece of knowledge that the audience might not understand, thinks that if they start their answer with ‘so’, it will for some bizarre reason make their answer clearer while preserving their image as some kind of superior being with esoteric knowledge that they are deigning to share with us.

“So it’s an airborne virus, which means it’s carried on the air.”

“So the cow eats the grass and then we milk the cow and make the cheese from the milk.”

So yes, dear Colyoomistas, it’s getting to me. It’s not the word ‘so’ that irks me but more the way it’s now being used. We all know language is an amorphous entity, with culture and technology providing new words, but it’s people like us who choose which ones we want to use or leave behind.

I love the process, as it keeps us scribblers on our toes, while offering a zeitgeist insight into the minds, styles and preferences of our society. So the next time you hear somebody giving an explanation starting with ‘so’, remove the word in your mind and see if their sentence suffers in the slightest.  I don’t think so.

Quite possibly you’ve already decided that Adley has lost his noodle once more and you may well be right, but pay some heed. I have good form in the wordy way of things. I’m proud to say this colyoom raised a very early red flag on the word ‘iconic’:

Double Vision – March 2009:

“It’s official. The word ‘iconic’ has just become iconic. It’s an iconic word. Pure iconic. Our 21st century culture craves ultimates as if there is no tomorrow. Hyperbole and exaggeration now reign where adjectives and a varied vocabulary used to do a fair job. It’s no longer sufficient for anything to be unique, special, vital or extraordinary.  If it’s not iconic it’s not worth a busted light bulb.”

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.