Snowclone

This article is about the linguistic template. For the dessert, see snowcone.

Snowclone is a neologism for a type of cliché and phrasal template originally defined as "a multi-use, customizable, instantly recognizable, time-worn, quoted or misquoted phrase or sentence that can be used in an entirely open array of different variants".

An example snowclone is the phrase "grey is the new black," a form of the template "X is the new Y." X and Y may be replaced with different words or phrases—for example, "Orange is the New Black" or even "comedy is the new rock 'n' roll." Saddam Hussein's 1991 speech promising "the mother of all wars" gave rise to the snowclone "the mother of all X," e.g. "the mother of all patents," "the mother of all bombs", etc. The term "snowclone" can be applied to both the original phrase and to a new phrase that uses its formula.

History

The term snowclone was coined by Glen Whitman on January 15, 2004, in response to a request from Geoffrey Pullum on the Language Log weblog. Pullum endorsed it as a term of art the next day, and it has since been adopted by other linguists, journalists and authors. The term alludes to one of Pullum's example template phrases:

If Eskimos have N words for snow, X surely have M words for Y.

As Language Log explains, this is a popular rhetorical trope used by journalists to imply that cultural group X has reason to spend a great deal of time thinking about the specific idea Y, although the basic premise (that Eskimos have a larger number of words for snow) is often disputed by those who study such Eskimo languages.

In 1995, linguist David Crystal referred to this kind of trope as a "catch structure," citing as an example the phrase "to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before" as originally used in Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series (1978). Adams' phrase references Star Trek ("...to boldly go where no man has gone before!") to humorously point out the use of a split infinitive, a controversial construction.

Snowclones are related to both memes and clichés, as the Los Angeles Times' David Sarno notes, "Snowclones are memechés, if you will: meme-ified clichés with the operative words removed, leaving spaces for you or the masses to Mad Lib their own versions." In the study of folklore, snowclones are a form of what are usually described as a proverbial phrase which have a long history of description and analysis. There are many kinds of such wordplay, as described in a variety of studies of written and oral sources.

See also

• Construction grammar
• Proverb and Anti-proverb

External links

• The Snowclones Database