Word people love to play with ‘snowclones’
They are often written out in almost mathematical form: “To X, or not to X.” “Make X Y again.” “Keep X and Y on.”
Staff
“To write, or not to write, that is the question.” “Make grammar fun again.” “Keep calm and scribble on.” These are what linguists call snowclones, formulaic phrases “that can be adapted for different situations by changing only some of the words,” as Dictionary.com puts it. They are often written out in almost mathematical form: “To X, or not to X.” “Make X Y again.” “Keep X and Y on.” These X’s and Y’s are variables, indicating that you can substitute any words that make sense (-core, or Xcore, which we talked about last week, is sometimes classed as a sort of “kiddie-sized” snowclone).
The framework of a snowclone is by definition a cliché, as they only work with phrases that people recognize instantly. The creative part is finding new ways to fill in the blanks, like playing Mad Libs.
In 2003, linguist Geoffrey Pullum was looking for a good name for a “linguistic figure” he’d noticed, “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 jokey variants by lazy journalists and writers.” He was thinking in particular of articles that led with “If the Inuit have X words for snow, then A must have B words for C.” (“If [the Inuit] have dozens of words for snow, Germans have as many for bureaucracy,” an article in The Economist posited, for example.) Economist Glen Whitman suggested the punny name snowclones, which stuck.
Though the name is only a couple of decades old, the phenomenon has been around for centuries. A favorite Renaissance snowclone was “X me no X(s).” In Shakespeare’s “Richard II,” for example, the Duke of York rejects his nephew’s attempts to curry favor (“My gracious uncle ...”) with “Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle.” Other playwrights of the era have “Plot me no plots!” The snowclone lives on in 1964’s “Fiddler on the Roof,” when three unmarried women sing about rejecting the village matchmaker’s services: “Groom me no groom. Find me no find. Catch me no catch.”
Online, people seem to enjoy coming up with new “flavors” of snowclone. “X is the new Y,” which apparently originated when Vogue editor Diana Vreeland announced that “pink is the navy blue of India,” has spread far beyond fashion, producing “50 is the new 30,” “Knitting is the new yoga,” “Slovenia is the new Switzerland,” and so on. When the Las Vegas tourism authority adopted the slogan “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” in 2003, it spawned an endlessly productive snowclone that has been filled in with everything from “book club” to “Vermont” – “What happens in Vermont stays in Vermont. But nothing ever really happens.”
Perhaps some snowclones are “lazy” writing as Mr. Pullum suggests, but more frequently they seem to offer evidence of how much we love to play with language, and how creative we can be.