“You’re So Not Going to Believe This”:

Abstract

This article explores the use of so-called GenX so in constructions with future going to in American English, as exemplified by “Guys, you’re so not going to believe what just happened” (Simone; All My Children, ABC, June 20, 2003). This study draws on the Corpus of American Soap Operas (https://corpus.byu.edu/soap/) to examine the development of emphasized going to (certainly/definitely/really going to are also considered) between 2001 and 2012. It analyzes approximately 2,600 tokens, highlighting differences and similarities in the use of these emphasizers. The data show: (1) so, while being less frequent than certainly and definitely, covaries with them; (2) young female characters are most likely to use GenX so; (3) so going to exhibits a fairly restricted collocational range compared to the other emphasizers, particularly in negated utterances; and (4) second-person subjects (you) favor this new construction. Naturally, differences between television dialogue and natural speech are considered.