Naked Is the New Clothed

Quote:  “X is the new Y.”  Erin O’Connor in the Snowclones Database.

Figure of Speech:  snowclone (SNO-clone), the retrofitted cliché.

Figaro loves screwing up clichés (see page 213 of his book).  His mouth waters at the very thought of the snowclone, which takes a cliché and adapts it to a new purpose.  “Have X, will travel” is a snowclone.  Remember the stupid “Close encounters of the X kind?”  Another snowclone.  “X is the new black,” an expression that continues to infect women’s magazines, derives from fashion guru Diana Vreeland who said, cryptically, “Pink is the navy blue of India.” 

Thanks to Jeff Sexton for sending us the Snowclones link.  The name comes from the hoax that the Eskimos have N words for snow.  (Just so you don’t think Figaro makes all this stuff up, the term was first proposed on the blog agoraphilia and promoted on the highly influential Language Log.)

Aristotle would scratch his hoary head and ask how the snowclone differs from his commonplace — received wisdom that counts as a rhetorical axiom in an argument.  And we would say to A-man:  The commonplace doesn’t change.  The snowclone is new and improved.

Or, perhaps, new and abused.

Snappy Answer:  “Y thinks X is tacky.”

Bondage and Figuring

Here’s a great question we got in Ask Figaro:

Hi Fig,
My sister, a college classmate of yours, recommended I ask you about the rhetorical device of attaching a suffix to a word or word fragment to associate it with a familiar incident, condition, etc. The ones I can think of are: “-gate”, from Watergate, to denote a scandal (ie. Nannygate, Contragate, fajitagate) and “-holic”, from alcoholic, to denote addiction (ie. chocoholic, workaholic). Is there a name for these and can you think of any others?
Thanks very much,
Doug

Dear Doug,

Your sister was our college classmate? As an alumnaholic, we’re curious. She must be brilliant, because we can indeed answer your question. The name for those gates and holics is bound morpheme.  A morpheme is language’s version of an atom, a building block of meaning. A bound morpheme is affixed to a word to change its meaning. Hence Irangate, Monicagate, and shopaholic.

Warning: a morpheme can be addictive. See this.  Still want to see more?

• “Tron”: you got your electron, your cyclotron, and your robot-like waitron (called “server” in finer restaurants).
• “Ize”: energize, idionize, idolize
• “Uber”: replaces “super” or “ultra” for far more annoying effect
• “Athon”: walkathon, eatathon, shopathon

Now, did you really mean it when you wrote in a separate email that you’d buy copies of Thank You for Arguing for every family member if Figaro could answer your question? Well, we think that’s just uber!

Fig.

It’s Alive!

Quote:  “Die, N-word.  We don’t want to see you around here no more.”  Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.

Figure of Speech:  tabooism, a form of circumlocution.  From the Tongan tabu, meaning “forbidden.”

At the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s national convention, horses drew a carriage with a pine casket.  Inside the casket was the anthropomorphically embalmed word “nigger.”

Did Figaro just offend you?  Forgive him; he has a reason.

The word “nigger” didn’t become a bad word in America until the nineteenth century, when it took on pejorative connotations.  Derived from the Latin niger, meaning “black,”  it allows Figaro to demonstrate a perfect tabooism — a word or phrase that substitutes for a forbidden word.  Figaro devised the term “tabooism” himself, because circumlocution is too broad to describe the phenomenon.

A circumlocution (or periphrasis, as Figaro’s Greek homeys called it) swaps an unpleasant word or phrase with a description.  (Bodily waste for doo-doo, significant other for “guy I’m shacking up with”.)  A tabooism does the same thing, except that it substitutes only for words imbued with scary powers:  Adonai for Yahweh,  gee for Jesus, He Who Must Not Be Named for Voldemort, and the F-word for, well, you know.

Of course, one of the best ways to give a taboo more power is to ban it. By burying the N-word, the NAACP may actually turn it into one of the Figuratively Undead.

WTF?

Snappy Answer:  “S’up, person of color?”

Now, Scoot!

Quote:  “The president’s getting pounding on the right for not granting a full pardon.”  White House spokesman Tony Snow

Figure of Speech:  eunoia (you-NOY-a), disinterested good will.  From the Greek, meaning “well mind.”

The White House is trying to whip up some serious eunoia over the president’s commute of Scooter Libby’s perjury sentence.  Eunoia is one of the three characteristics of a persuasive character (the other two being phronesis and virtue).  People are more likely to trust your decision if they think you made it independently, keeping only the audience’s well-being in mind.  That’s disinterest.  We often mistake it for “uninterest,” but the word actually means “free of special interests.”

Today’s quote is not eunoia itself, but a tactic to achieve it.  If you want to appear to stand nobly above the fray, complain about being attacked by both sides.  You’re the moderate independent. 

Figaro took a quick look at the leading conservative blogs and didn’t see a whole lot of outrage over Bush’s decision.  There’s more speculation that Libby will end up with a full pardon at the end of the term.  But perhaps Figaro read only the disinterested blogs. 

Snappy Answer:  “Maybe he should beg pardon.”

Color-Blind Justice

Quote:  “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”  Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts

Figure of Speech:  antistasis (an-TIS-stah-sis), the repeat that changes meaning. From the Greek, meaning “opposite stance.”

In yet another 5-4 decision, the Supremes ruled that quotas cannot be used as a factor to increase racial diversity in schools.  Chief Justice Roberts, the court’s reigning master of figures, uses a powerful antistasis to support his side.  The figure repeats a word, phrase or clause in a way that transforms the meaning.

If you want to stop discrimination — meaning the historically unfair treatment of racial minorities — then stop discriminating.  But in this second clause, discrimination suddenly becomes something very different.  It’s not discrimination against minorities but for them.  Roberts cleverly uses Americans’ belief that discrimination is bad to make a case against racial quotas.

Is that an undiscriminating use of “discrimination”?  Perhaps.  But it more than meets Figaro’s daily figures quota.

Snappy Answer:  “So the best way to help minorities is to stop helping minorities?”

Paris Learned Figures in Prison!

Quote:  “Don’t serve the time; let the time serve you.”  Paris Hilton

Figure of Speech:  chiasmus (key-AS-mus), the criss-cross figure.  From the Greek word for the letter “X.”

“God makes everything happen for a reason,” Paris told Larry King before celebrating her freedom at a Las Vegas disco.  Apparently, the good Lord didn’t want to punish her for driving drunk with a suspended license.  He wanted Paris to spend three weeks in jail “as a journey to figure out myself.”

The martyr-like heiress offered stir-induced wisdom in a marvelous chiasmus, a figure that utters a phrase or clause and then plays it backward.  Paris’s chiasmus is positively Shakespearean. (“I wasted time, and now time doth waste me,” said the Bard.)

Figaro is now, like, totally hot for Hilton.  Figuratively speaking.

Snappy Answer:  “It’s like room service, only with time.”