A little more of The New Y
I don't intend to post
new
sightings of the snowclone The New Y as they come in -- there are
just too many of them -- but I've recently come across two examples
that strike me as of more than routine interest.
Meanwhile, as New Year's Day approaches, I've been hoping to unearth
instances of "X is the new year": the decade is the new year, decades
are the new years, the month is the new year, months are the new years,
etc. No luck so far.
New sighting 1: "Pink is the new gold." This cleverness from
Peggy Orenstein in a
New York Times
Magazine piece "What's wrong with Cinderella?" (12/24/06, p.
36). The story is about the "princess" trend for little girls,
with everything in the color pink, a trend that is making huge profits
(the gold) for Disney, Mattel, and others. This one echoes the
ur-New-Y expression "Pink is the new black" in having
pink as the subject and (what can
be used as) a color word,
gold,
in the predicate, while punning on that word.
Anyone unfamiliar with the
snowclone would probably have a lot of trouble interpreting the
sentence.
New sighting 2: "Doubt is the new religion, but does doubt doubt
itself?" In a letter to the
New
York Times (12/26/06, p. A26) from Peter McFadden, writing about
a recent upsurge in commentary critical of religious belief. This
one is interesting because it can be read literally, parallel to "Doubt
is the new trend" and understood as conveying 'Doubt is a new
religion', or as an instance of the snowclone, conveying something
stronger, roughly 'Doubt has replaced religion'. My first guess
was that McFadden intended the latter, but then I'm disposed to see
snowclones everywhere.
zwicky at-sign csli period stanford period edu
Posted by Arnold Zwicky at December 28, 2006 10:49 AM