Snowclone

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A snowclone is 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 jokey variants by lazy journalists and writers."^[1]

An example of a snowclone is "X is the new Y", a generic form of the expression "pink is the new black". X and Y may be replaced with new words or phrases, as in "Random is the new order", a marketing phrase for the iPod shuffle. Both the generic formula and the new phrases produced from it are called "snowclones".

It emphasizes the use of a familiar (and often particular) formula and previous cultural knowledge of the reader to express information about an idea. The idea being discussed may be different in meaning from the original formula, but can be understood using the same trope as the original formulation.

1 Other examples
2 History
3 See also
4 References
5 Further reading
6 External links

[edit] Other examples

"Have X, will travel." It was popularized by Have Gun – Will Travel, the title of a 1957-1963 U.S. radio and television show, which derived from the stock phrasing of short "want ads" in Variety: an example is Have Tux, Will Travel,^[2] the title of Bob Hope's memoirs.^[3] Robert A. Heinlein's 1958 novel Have Spacesuit, Will Travel was also a reference to this stock phrase.
"X considered harmful." The rise of this phrasal template was sparked by Edsger Dijkstra's 1968 letter to the Communications of the ACM, titled "Go To Statement Considered Harmful", as well as the responses "'GOTO Considered Harmful' Considered Harmful" and "'"GOTO Considered Harmful" Considered Harmful' Considered Harmful?".^[4]
"Got X?" This was originated by the "Got Milk?" campaign by the California Milk Processor Board in 1993, and has spawned many imitators, such as "Got Jesus?", "Got Beer?", and "Got Rice?".^[5]

[edit] History

The term was coined by Glen Whitman on January 15, 2004,^[1] in response to a request from Geoffrey Pullum on the Language Log weblog.^[6] The term is an allusion to a specific instance of the phenomenon:

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

As the 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,^[7]^[8] despite the fact that the basic premise is wrong: Eskimos do not have an unusually large number of words for "snow" (see Eskimo words for snow).

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". It was originally used in Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series (1978).^[9] (Adams's phrase is a reference to a Star Trek phrase "...to boldly go where no man has gone before!", which contains a split infinitive, a grammar construction criticized by language purists.)