clones (was: "Don't call us, we'll call you" (1963))

[Gerald Cohen]

    "job job"?--Was this ever more than a slightly used construction?
FWIW, two thoughts come to mind here:
1) We may deal with an expression that originated with small
children, for whom reduplication is common. A small child might have
asked his/her father if he was leaving "for his job job." And then
the parents might have affectionately adopted the children's
reduplicated term. (Cf. parents' adopting of children's mangled
versions of their own names or the names of siblings, to be used
affectionately as nicknames.)
2) "job job" sounds very close to "John John," President Kennedy's
son (so called as a small child).  Any possible influence here? Is
"job job" pretty much isolated?

---Gerald Cohen

>At 9:47 PM +0800 4/1/01, Laurence Horn wrote:
>Date:         Sun, 1 Apr 2001 21
>From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>Subject:      Re: clones (was: "Don't call us, we'll call you" (1963))
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
>>DON'T CALL US, WE'LL CALL YOU
>>
>>    OED News, July 1997, asked for any pre-1987 cites for "Don't call
>>us, we'll call you."
>>    This is why they pay me the big bucks.
>>    From the NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE MAGAZINE, 16 June 1963, pg. 4:
>>
>>_"Don't call us, we'll call you..."
>>But the young actor can't sit and wait for the big break   he must
>>go out and seek it, however wearying the hunt.
>>
>>(Pg. 5, col. 2 photo caption--ed.)
>>Terry winds up his morning "job job" as conductor of a Grey Line bus tour.
>>
>Nice example of a lexical clone, too.  I wonder if these were really
>around much earlier than '63.  I certainly don't recall these clones
>or doubles being as robust a phenomenon when I was growing up, but I
>can't say they didn't exist at all.  Unfortunately, this is hard to
>check with the feeble search procedures I know how to use--Nexis
>doesn't go back that far, and the years it covers can't easily be
>searched for "job job", to take one random example, without pulling
>in all the "jobs and jobs" or "job to job" hits that are irrelevant
>to the construction in question, and of course any attempt to search
>for "X X for variable X" are hopeless.  Anyone have any suggestions
>on how to proceed if one wished to trace the history of the clone
>construction in English via cites?
>
>larry