@inbook{f284cc1c8c00488bb1aa93d13bdecf08,
title = "Foreword",
abstract = "This chapter examines a recent use of so in spoken British English, namely as a discourse marker conveying acceptance of an invitation to take the floor and give an explanation. I demonstrate a long-term increase in turn-initial so, dating the specifically {\textquoteleft}explanatory so{\textquoteright} to the 2010s in Britain. Evidence comes from corpora of academic discourse, of media language and especially of conversation. I argue that the usage is a coalescence of several well-attested discourse uses of so, perhaps strengthened by transatlantic influence. I explain the often hostile public reaction by the sentence grammar of so, also offering a general hypothesis about what makes an innovation salient and objectionable to conservative speakers.",
keywords = "English language, discourse, innovation",
author = "David Denison",
year = "2020",
month = oct,
day = "5",
doi = "10.1075/scl.97.for",
language = "English",
isbn = "9789027260642",
series = "Studies in Corpus Linguistics",
publisher = "John Benjamins Publishing Company",
pages = "xii--xiii",
editor = "Ewa Jonsson and Tove Larsson",
booktitle = "Voices past and present - Studies of involved, speech-related and spoken texts",
address = "Netherlands",
}