It drives me mad seeing people answer questions with so: Overt and covert attitudes toward so-prefacing answers

Abstract

This paper investigates attitudes toward prefacing the answer to a question from an interlocutor with the discourse marker so, which has been tentatively found to be on the rise since the 1990s. Functions of this form, informally referred to as “backstory so,” include marking added background or length that is unexpected by the questioner. This paper presents (i) evidence in the popular media that it is perceived as new and overtly associated with negative attributes (annoying, condescending) and differing stereotypes (scientific experts, Valley Girls); and (ii) findings of a matched guise that investigated whether those associations remain indexed by so-prefacing answers when attitudes are elicited implicitly. Statistically significant results of t-tests and a principal component analysis suggest that so-prefacing answers was perceived more negatively than a control discourse marker, well, in both a female and male voice, on a status axis (e.g., less Educated and Intelligent), as expected. On a solidarity axis, the male so guise also earned poorer evaluations than the control but the female so guise was not evaluated quite as negatively, which had not been reflected in the overt attitudes. The so guises were also more linked to Valley Girl and Tech Bro speech.