"step away from the X"

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:41 AM -0400 4/21/07, James Harbeck wrote:
>Here's a lately popular idiom, started by "Step away from the
>vehicle," I'm pretty sure.

Yes, this is a definite meme or snowclone or whatever we're calling
them; crucial too is the intonation, which ideally approaches that of
a police officer enunciating clearly and forcefully, possibly through
a loudspeaker.  There's often a slight pause between "step" (with
unreleased [p], rather than the usual elision with the following
vowel) and a slight rise on "away"; someone with a better control of
the descriptive terminology could  do a better job of narrowing down
exactly what this intonation is.  This has been quite popular in
commercials.

LH

>  "Step away from the Blackberry" gets 158
>Google hits all by itself. If you search just "step away from the"
>you get nealry a million hits; some of the ones on the first couple
>of pages are graffiti, cold medicine, keyboard, spell-checker (yay
>for that one!), social media release, PC, mousse (with your hands
>up), shovel, podium, Gatt chart, jokes, computer, and tofu burger.
>
>James Harbeck.
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org