Linguistics Cartoon Favorites - Snowclones

Trending with Snowclones - X is the New Y

According to my teenage sons and via a You Tube video with the same title -

"Cone-ing is the new planking."

cone-ing: v. Ordering a soft-serve ice cream from a drive-through and picking it up by the ice cream rather than the cone.

Adorable baby - image from CBS News: What's Trending

planking: v. Lying face down, with arms at one's side in a random place an taking a photograph to share on the internet.

Read more about cone-ing here and planking here.

Open a Can of Snowclones

A new billboard advertising campaign began appearing across Michigan in the last couple of months.

For a closer look at the campaign, here is an image from an in-store ad.


Linguistically, two things strike me about this campaign.

1. Weed is a well-known slang term for marijuana so it seems obvious that the company is aiming this product at, shall we say, an edgier crowd.

and

2. The campaign tag line is remarkably reminiscent of the idiomatic expressions, "open a can of whoop ass" and "open a can of worms", especially since the forth word in the tag line and each idiomatic expression begins with a /w/.

As to number 2 - The former idiomatic expression is in all likelihood a snowclone of the latter, and whether the tag line is an intentional snowclone of either or just a coincidence, I couldn't tell you. I will say that I sure wouldn't want my product to be associated with creating a situation that causes trouble or involves taking a beating.



P.S. A snowclone is a phrase that is produced by using a clichéd phrase as a linguistic template. Open a can of (fill in the blank).

Snowclones in Media are Frequent(*er) than they Seem

Who would ever think that the following phrase would be turned into a snowclone.

Image from here.

I wouldn't have...until I saw a Taco Bell billboard on I-75 in Michigan with a large taco and the caption "Objects on billboard are closer than they appear."

I was not able to get a picture of the actual billboard so this image of tacos from Taco Bell will have to suffice.

At any rate, I will be honest and say that, pragmatically, the message on the billboard caption confuses me a bit. The image of the taco is unrealistically large, so of course it appears closer than it ever actually could be. This in turn makes me think that the location of the restaurant where I (the famished traveller) could get the taco is not that close. As far as billboard advertising goes, this seems counterproductive.

By the way, when looking for images of the actual billboard on the web, I came across this image that further reinforces the snowclone-ability of the phrase "Objects on billboard are closer than they appear."

Image from here.

Phrasal Templates in Advertising

Driving on the expressway recently, I passed a truck bearing a particular phrase. Most drivers would probably write it off as an eponymous company name and not give it any more thought. My language-loving, word-playing brain wouldn't let it go so quickly however. 

Image from: Rich Logistics

Above is what I saw, below is what I thought: 


Rich logistics, poor genetics
Rich logistics, poor athletics
Rich logistics, poor statistics
Rich logistics, poor aesthetics
Rich logistics, poor didactics
Rich logistics, poor schematics


And the list could go on and on.


These phrasal coordinations are based on the well-known and snowclone-able phrase "often imitated, never duplicated".


According to the Phrase Finder, "often imitated (but) never duplicated" has been "used in a lot of different ad copy back to the 1920's but it doesn't seem to have been a trademarked slogan exclusive to one product or company."


Snowclones of "often imitated, never duplicated" that I have seen include "big taste, small budget" and "cold beer, hot food". I'm sure there are many more too; so, please feel free to share additional examples in comments.


A semantic analysis of the snowclone: "desriptor + descriptee, desriptor + descriptee" 
Note: Descriptors in the coordinations must be antonyms


A syntactic analysis of the snowclone: "Adj + Noun, Adj + Noun" or "Adverb + Verb, Adverb + Verb"


My apologies to Rich Logistics; it is all in good fun.