Snowclones on Thin Ice: An Empirical Study on Snowclones and Defixed Multiword Expressions

Multi-word expressions can be defined as combinations of words with a certain degree of idiomaticity. These expressions can become “defixed,” meaning they undergo formal and semantic changes, such as “V for Vendetta” (James McTeigue, 2005) becoming “V pour Vend des tartes” (“V for we sell pies”, the name of a bakery in the town of Berfray, France). In this article, we study the phenomenon of defixation through the concept of “snowclones,” generally defined as partially fixed phrase patterns (such as “X is the new Y”) derived from or alluding to an expression. We seek (i) to determine whether, as the literature on them suggests, snowclones invariably manifest themselves in a single, sTable configuration and (ii) to demonstrate that snowclones should not be considered specific phraseological units, but rather situated within a broader descriptive framework, among other types of defixed expressions.