Bill:
I Googled “thanks so much” in parentheses
and got 17 million hits. Then I added 1950 (randomly chosen date) and looked at
some newspaper archives where the phrase appeared. Here is
one example from an Iowa newspaper in 1950. Clearly, it’s not a new
expression.
Dick Veit
________________________________
Richard Veit
Department of English
From:
Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2008
3:39 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Unresolved comparative
"so"
Dear
All:
I’m
trying to figure out whether my reactions to a particular construction are
based on my age (incipient geezerhood), or my native dialect (Inland
Southern). It involves use of comparative “so” without an
accompanying “that” clause, roughly equivalent to
“very”:
A:
“Thanks so much”
B: “It
was so hot.”
I
hear (A) very frequently, but I don’t remember hearing it when I was
younger. I also hear expressions like (B) from my students, although not nearly
as frequently as (A), which has become a set expression. I can almost make (B)
work in my own speech, but only with a lot of emphasis on the “so”
and an emphatic drop at the end of the sentence, but this is not always how my
students use it. Somehow, I can’t manage (A) at all – any attempt
and I can tell it’s coming out as sarcasm (“Oh, now my leg’s
broken. Thanks SO much.”).
I’ve
checked the American Dialect Society listserv archive, but I either used the
wrong search terms, or there hasn’t been much discussion of it. My
attention was particularly drawn to it by a recent political robocall (I live
in
Thanks!
Bill
Spruiell
Dept.
of English