I believe 'snowclone' was coined in the context of Language Log; at least they seem to think so. 2004 would be pretty early for Wikipedia, but I guess it's possible.
But I think this thing under current discussion is too large and self-sustaining a structure to be a true subset of snowclone. A snowclone, I think, is a snappy phrase used as a colouring passing allusion in a larger thought, not something that's set up just for the purpose of the substitution. Otherwise knock-knock jokes would be snowclones just because they can be expressed as "Knock knock / Who's there? / [X] / [X] who? / [X] [Y]".
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Date: 2010-11-23 09:54 pm (UTC)But I think this thing under current discussion is too large and self-sustaining a structure to be a true subset of snowclone. A snowclone, I think, is a snappy phrase used as a colouring passing allusion in a larger thought, not something that's set up just for the purpose of the substitution. Otherwise knock-knock jokes would be snowclones just because they can be expressed as "Knock knock / Who's there? / [X] / [X] who? / [X] [Y]".