"Look..." as political sentence opener

Several years ago, blogger Bill Swadley, writing for the Huffington Post, commented on then-president Obama's distracting use of the word "look" as an opening to unexpected questions or unrehearsed comments. While generally supportive of the president, whom he terms a "fine writer" and "eloquent" as a public speaker, Swadley takes issues with use of this word in its non-literal sense as verbal filler. From what I can tell, Swadly is being mock-serious and just using his blog to point to the president's speech habit.

Interestingly, and perhaps ironically, "Look ..." as an initial opening pause has become rather prominent in speakers reacting to the actions tweets of President Donald Trump in recent weeks.

Here's his deputy press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders:

"Look, the American people elected a fighter; they didn't elect somebody to sit back and do nothing," she said. "They knew what they were getting when they voted for Donald Trump."

And below is a quote from Paul Ryan, who always seems more than a little annoyed to have to defend the president's words on such a regular basis. Rep. Ryan is responding to a question related to the president's unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud:

“Look, I’m a policy guy,” he said. “I’m going to sit here and focus on policy and I’m not going to get into the puts and the takes on all of these things.”

As a sentence opener, "look" seems slightly contentious, a shortened version of the challenge "Now look here" or something along the lines of "Hold on a second." It asks the listener to change directions, to look over here instead of over there, or to "look at the simple facts." It conveys a tone of polite annoyance or exasperation, as if to say, "All right, that's enough. Stop it." It isn't surprising that those who have been challenged to react to the bellicose tweets of Trump might respond defensively. After all, these are the tweets of another person, and they often throw curves at even his most ardent supporters.

President Obama's use of "look ..." never seemed to eclipse his more prominent and widely noted use of "let's be clear."  "Look" seems like an innocent-enough quirk most of the time, whereas "let's be clear" has a more forceful tone and clear rhetorical purpose.

A interesting variation on "Look ..." as a verbal pause is "Look here."  When it's used less defensively (not as fighting words, as in "Look here, Buddy"), the phrase "look here" is used as an "attention getter." The phrase seems more prominent in African-American vernacular as a signifier, or a word that draws attention to the speaker and asserts a kind of presence. I've heard it in the south as a preface to things as innocuous as the giving of directions. It's a surprisingly colorful opener that tends to create an instant kind of authority.

Some of the printed quotes of Sanders and Huckabee eliminate the "look" as verbal filler. That's within the rights of editors, but such an omission understates the importance of a rhetorical device as deceptively simple as "look."  It's defensive and authoritarian, all at the same time. That's quite a look.