Me fail English? That's unpossible!

I make no claims to be any sort of linguistics expert, I just appreciate The English As She Is Spoke. In fact, to be honest, most of the terminology found in the links to follow sailed so far over my head I'd need the freaking Hubble Telescope. Nonetheless, here goes.

You know those kinds of clichéd phrases where you can plug in whatever it is you want to refer to in order to get your point (or joke) across? If you answered with the question, "Huhwhah?", perhaps these examples will clarify:

• I'm not an X, but I play one on TV.
• If we X then the terrorists have won.
• X is the new Y.

or my personal favorite

• X 2: Electric Boogaloo

There is an actual term for this, and it's called a snowclone. Why, you may be asking, is it called a dumb name like that? The term is an allusion to one particular instance of the phenomenon:

If Eskimos have N words for snow, X surely have Y words for Z.

The guy who introduced the concept has a blog called Language Log, which maintains a running discussion on the subject. The index for all of his articles is here. If you want to skip all the analysis and whatnot, Wikipedia has a pretty extensive list of snowclones, too.

For some odd reason this really tickled me, even though, frankly, I didn't really know what she was talking about. Linguist Heidi Harley categorizes some of the language humor in The Simpsons. Lots of examples are listed as well as what class of liguistic humor they fall into. I'm not quite sure if Troy McClure introducing one of his infomercials with “I’m Troy McClure, star of such films as ‘P is for Psycho’” is funnier knowing that the humor is because of English spelling, borrowed consonant cluster reduction, but I appreciate that someone has gone to the effort of doing this.

Similarly, some mathematics professors have, ahem, "zeroed" in on the math humor in The Simpsons. Examples from all 18 (and counting) seasons.

Mrs. Krabappel: Now whose calculator can tell me what 7 times 8 is?

Milhouse: Oh! Oh! Oh! “Low battery?”

Mrs. Krabappel [sighs]: Whatever.

Sign at Slotcar Heaven toy racing car store: “1/24 the size, 3/8 the fun”

[A TV ad for the state lottery is shown.]

Employee: I don't need your crummy job, Mr. Employer! I've won the lottery!

Employer: Well, who needs employees? I won the lottery, too!

[two window washers descend on a scaffold, each with a huge bag of cash at his feet]

Window washers: We both won the lottery!

All [to camera]: Why don't you win the lottery, too!

Announcer: The state lottery, where everybody wins! (Actual odds of winning: one in 380,000,000.)

Kent: But there's already one big winner: Our state school system, which gets fully half the profits from the lottery.

Principal Skinner [talking to his teachers in the Faculty Lounge]:

Just think what we can buy with that money… History books that know how the Korean War came out… math books that don't have that base six crap in them… and a state-of-the-art detention hall [holds up a scale model] where children are held in place with magnets.

Teacher: Magnets. Always with the magnets...

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