So Grown Stale? On Intensifying and Emphasizing Uses of Preverbal so in Present-Day American English

Abstract

The present study addresses the question of whether preverbal so, also known as “GenX so,” which can be used as an intensifier and as an emphasizer, is going out of fashion as a means of emphasis in present-day American English as demonstrated in scripted soap operas. The results are based on 1,357 tokens of preverbal so extracted from Mark Davies’s Corpus of American Soap Operas (2011–). These tokens 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 future going to). If TV data reflects the intensifier’s use in natural speech, preverbal so can be taken to have grown stale in some contexts.