Who died and made you the king of snowclones?
Mary Karr, in the NYT
Book Review
of 7/30/06, p. 4, rebuking Ben Kunkel for his "rant against memoir":
Who died and put Ben Kunkel in charge
of what memoirists are supposed to do?
Ah, a Who Died And snowclone, with an especially interesting semantics.
The form of the snowclone is
Who died and VPAST X Y?
where V
PAST is
put, left, made, appointed, named,
elected,...
and X denotes a person, group of people, or institution, Y a position
of position of power and/or responsibility, often described hyperbolically
("king", "God"). (If the verb is "put", then Y is almost always
"in charge (of Z)".) The figure conveys roughly 'X is not, should
not be, does not deserve to be Y', in a context where X is seen to be
claiming to be Y or others are claiming this on X's behalf. In the Karr example: 'Ben Kunkel is not
in charge of what memoirists are supposed to do (and shouldn't act as
if he is)'.
Some more examples:
David Reinhard of the Portland
Oregonian addressed a relevant question to Bill Keller this past week:
"Who died and left you president of the United States?" (
link)
Who Died and Made Google King? (
link)
Who died and made us the world's policeman? (
link)
Who died and appointed him eternal King and Lord Emporer over the rest
of you lesser folk? (Note: that was a rhetorical question; please do
not flood my ... (
link)
Pardon my indignation, but who died and named you the Chief
Statistician? (
link)
Who died and elected Junior McGee as dictator of Milwaukee? (
link)
The Who Died And snowclone is of the form of a wh question with "who"
as subject and a coordinate VP, with conjuncts "died" and V
PAST
X Y. So its literal interpretation would be
who is the x such that x died and x VPAST
X Y?
e.g., who is the x such that x died and x made Google king?
But this can't be right, since it's not x but x's death that would
cause X to be Y; in its literal interpretation, the question has to be
understood metonymically, as
who is the x such that x's death VPAST
X Y?
e.g., who is the x such that x's death made Google king?
Of course, the question isn't understood literally; as one of the
writers above points out, it's a rhetorical question, conveying a
denial:
there is no x such that x's death VPAST
X Y
e.g., there is no x such that x's death made Google king
This, in turn, is meant as an understatement; not only did
SOMEONE's
DEATH not V X Y,
NOTHING V
PAST X Y:
there is no event that VPAST
X Y
e.g., there is no event that made Google king
which then conveys the still stronger:
X is not Y, and there is no
cause/reason for X to be Y
e.g., Google is not king, and there is no cause/reason for Google to be
king
In contexts where X claims to be Y (or is claimed to be Y by other
people), this conveys:
X should not act as if X is Y
e.g., Google should not act as if it is king
or even:
X should stop acting as if X is Y; that
is, X, stop acting as if you're Y!
e.g., Google should stop acting as if it is king; that is, Google, stop
acting as if you're king!
When Y is hyperbolic, the hyperbole has to unpacked as well. In
the King Google example, for instance, we will understand "be king" as
conveying something like 'be in charge of everything', so that "Who
died and made Google king?" conveys something along the lines of
'Google, stop acting as if you're in charge of everything!"
We are finally home, after several steps of calculating conveyed meaning. This is a marvel of indirect conveying of
meaning.
As with any snowclone, there's
a
history to be uncovered, one going back at least to a
MODEL
formulaic expression (cliché, striking quotation, proverb or
saying, catchphrase, slogan, or memorable name or title) that served as
the basis for the generalization to other Vs, Xs, and Ys -- perhaps
"Who died and made you king?", uttered or written in some memorable
context. At the moment, I haven't a clue about what the
model was and what events caused it to spread and so become widely
available for generalization.
zwicky at-sign csli period stanford period edu
Posted by Arnold Zwicky at August 4, 2006 03:29 PM