So what's up?: Using the discourse marker so to launch conversational business

Abstract

In this article, I use conversation analytic methods to analyze interactional junctures in which transitions to the first conversational topic are accomplished. I examine several ways in which parties in ordinary (and especially telephone) conversations coordinate the launching of first talkables, focusing specifically on environments in which such moves are delayed. I observed that many such moves are prefaced with the discourse marker so suggesting that it plays an important role at this interactional juncture. In the article, I demonstrate that the underlying meaning of so as a marker of emergence from incipiency serves to characterize the upcoming action as introducing the conversation's first intended topicsomething that was projected by the very act of initiating the contact and oriented to by participants as having been pending or incipient. In addition to mundane telephone conversations, I briefly examine several institutional encounters to explore how so gets deployed for introducing institutional agendas.