Small words that mean a lot

When we talk about controversial words on this blog, most ofthem are “big words”: ones loaded with connotations and steeped in contentioushistory, such as the dreaded n-word (nigger, not nincompoop), housewife, slutand mong. Fair enough, they can often be very controversial. But little wordsare also important and a couple of those little words – so and thank you – havecome in for a bit of analysis of late.

Last week, Radio 4 took a look at how so is increasinglybeing used as a discourse marker. It’s also been looked at here and here.According to some suggestions, so is making the move from webpage to spokendiscourse in the kind of text to talk style that has given us LOL and OMG aseveryday spoken expressions.

Elsewhere, the changing face of British politeness was beingexplored by the Daily Mail, which – as you might imagine – saw a future of doomand rudeness (not to mention nasty illegal immigrants, sponging single mums andAmericans) in the changing place of thank you in our popular politenesslexicon. 

The Daily Mail story wasn’t entirely new, as it was coveredby The Daily Telegraph the year before, that time with a slightly different(but still rather spurious) “survey” into changing habits.