So grown stale? On intensifying and emphasizing uses of so with verbs in present-day American English

Abstract

The present study addresses the question of whether preverbal so (aka “GenX so”; Zwicky 2006), which can be used as intensifier and as emphasizer, is going out of fashion as a means of emphasis in present-day American English as used in soap operas. The results are based on over 1,300 tokens of preverbal so extracted from SOAP (Davies 2011–), which were used to create both real- and apparent-time scenarios to detect potential differences in the use of preverbal so for younger and older woman and man characters. The data suggest the following trend: between 2001 and 2012, so with emphatic DO and perfects is on its way out, while all other uses of preverbal so (e.g., so with simple forms or progressives) are still associated with the speech of female characters in general or with younger woman characters in particular (so with the going to-future). If viewing TV data as a reflection of intensifier use in natural speech, preverbal so can be taken to have grown “stale” (Bolinger 1972: 18) in some contexts (like its use with emphatic DO, which sounds rather old-fashioned) but to have retained (at least some of) its expressive force in others (like its use with progressives and future going to).