[Bloody Sam Roberts]

My biggest linguistic pet peeve as of late is how the youth are using “so...” with a drawn out ‘o’ at the end of sentences as if to elicit a response from others or otherwise just fill the air with vacuous noise.

I have noticed this too. I believe it is a natural progression from the fact that polite conversation amongst these individuals is a lost concept. Every one of them MUST say what is on their mind immediately. No waiting for a pause in the conversation because there is none. It is as if they simply cannot hold a thought in their head for more than a few seconds and form a complete sentence before speaking. No 'buffer' so to speak. If you pause while speaking...for even two seconds...you get interrupted.

Sooooo...they fill the vacuum with whatever vocal noise they can.

Simple, polite, CONversation is becoming a lost art. It has evolved...or devolved...into a room fool of ravens creating cacophony.

[rarestia]

It's definitely a devolution. In a big way, that's a leading reason for my abstention from the "new media" wave with social media and other banalities. Free Republic can at least provide me with an outlet full of like-minded men and women who CAN have an actual conversation.

Most young men and women, defined loosely for the purposes of this discussion, use vulgarity-laden speech to make themselves sound important or powerful while eschewing those of us who utilize words such as 'eschew' or 'banality.' It's similar to what Robin Williams said in Dead Poet's Society:

“So avoid using the word ‘very’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women - and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do. It also won’t do in your essays.”