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Proverbs within Cognitive Linguistics: State of the art
Edited by Sadia Belkhir
[Cognitive Linguistic Studies in Cultural Contexts 16] 2024
► pp. 260–297

Chapter 10
The only good snowclone is a dead snowclone

A cognitive-linguistic exploration of the frayed ends of proverbiality

| University of Copenhagen , Denmark

This chapter proposes that some snowclones (schematic stock phrases) display some degree of proverbiality to the extent that it can be argued that they occupy a grey zone between proverbs proper and semi-schematic idioms. Drawing on theoretical insights from construction grammar and cognitive-semantic approaches to socio-cultural cognition, this chapter also presents three case studies of snowclones within the English language that are based on corpus-data and corpus-linguistic methodology. More specifically, this chapter studies patterns of use, such as productivity, epistemic status marking, and co-occurrence with co-textual topics, of the only good X is a dead X, one does not simply X into Y, and in X no one can hear you Y so as to address their potential proverbial nature.

Keywords: construction grammar, cultural literacy, epistemic status, socio-cultural cognition
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Proverbial snowclones as constructions
    • 2.1Snowclones
    • 2.2Proverbiality
    • 2.3Proverbial snowclones
  • 3.Data and method
  • 4.Only good as a marker of social attitude
  • 5.Difficulties in Mordor
  • 6.Screaming in space and bread with Ripley
  • 8.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/clscc.16.10jen
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