Attack of the snowclones: A corpus-based analysis of extravagant formulaic patterns

Abstract

The concept of ‘snowclones’ has gained interest in recent research on linguistic creativity and in studies of extravagance and expressiveness in language. However, no clear criteria for identifying snowclones have yet been established, and detailed corpus-based investigations of the phenomenon are still lacking. This paper addresses this research gap in a twofold way. On the one hand, we develop an operational definition of snowclones, arguing that three criteria are decisive: (i) the existence of a lexically fixed source construction; (ii) partial productivity; (iii) ‘extravagant’ formal and/or functional characteristics. On the other hand, we offer an empirical investigation of two patterns that have often been mentioned as examples of snowclones in the previous literature, namely [the mother of allX] and [XBE the newY]. We use collostructional analysis and distributional semantics to explore the partial productivity of both patterns’ slot fillers. In sum, we argue that the concept of snowclones, if properly defined, can contribute substantially to our understanding of creative language use, especially regarding the question of how social, cultural, and interpersonal factors influence the choice of more or less salient linguistic constructions.