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539 Glossary for any unfamiliar terms

From discourse to social contexts | 219

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Resuming

So

and anyway, often accompanied by expressions such as where was I?, where

were we?

, what was I saying? or oh yes/yeah, can be used to resume an

interrupted or diverted topic:

The = sign indicates an utterance which is cut short

[in the middle of telling a story]

A: She says ‘Oh darling do wear something nice.’ You know. ‘Mark Darcy will

be here.’ And she turns up and she’s wearing something hideous and they’ve

told him that she’s very bookie. That she’s a secretary to a publisher or

something like that. 

B: Bookie? 

A: Bookie. 

B: What’s that? 

A: Likes books. 

B: Oh right. Oh. 

A: Anyway erm. 

Where was I?

B: Mm. You were erm= 

A: Oh yeah. She goes to this Christmas party and he’s been told to talk to her

about books because she’s a secretary or something. 

(resuming the story after a diversion to explain the unusual use of the word

bookie

)

[interrupted anecdote]

A: Is that your writing? 

B: No. Don’t know why that’s there. Cos I put that on. But I lent it to this= Do

you know that girl I hate, can’t remember her name, whatever. 

So

what was

I saying? 

A: That annoying one, Joan. 

B: Yeah. So he went to this thing and presented all these proposals that he’d 

got.

(resuming the main topic after trying to remember someone’s name)