For the snowclone files: "What is this 'X'...?"

[Grant Barrett]

Sorry I didn't catch on to this until Arnold's post about adding it
to Language Log, but there's an earlier incident of the expression
"What is this X of which you speak?" (though not, of course,
necessarily the earliest incident of the idea of aliens being
unfamiliar with a basic human concept--almost always despite having a
four limbs, good English, and spiffy jumpsuits). The incident is, I
believe, the prime candidate for parent of those that come after.

In the comedic science fiction book "Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy" by Douglas Adams, copyright 1979 (Del Rey-Ballantine, New
York, 2002), the hero, Arthur Dent, is taken to a the bowels of a
hyperdimensional factory floor where a new Earth is being built. He
is told by a scientist named Slartibartfast that the hyperdimensional
beings in charge are mice (at least, that's how they look in the
factory's dimension). Arthur replies,

[start book quote, p. 109]

"Look, sorry, are we talking about the little white furry things with
the cheese fixation and women standing on tables screaming in early
sixties sitcoms?"

Slartibartfast coughed politely.

"Earthman," he said, "it is sometimes hard to follow your mode of
speech. Remember I have been asleep inside this planet of Magrathea
for five million years and know little of these early sixties sitcoms
of which you speak."

[end book quote]

A radio version of the series was broadcast first. The episode
featuring the conversation quoted above, according to the information
at Wikipedia (one of those Wikipedia entries where obsessive fans
shine), was broadcast on Mar 22 1978. I have listened to this episode
and I do remember it containing the conversation quoted above--I even
remember it being a particularly sublime moment, due mostly the the
comic dryness of the actor playing Slartibartfast. However, I'm
hunting for it on the P2P networks now. I'll listen to it again; if
my memory is faulty, I'll let you know.

I do think that both the radio version and the book were popular
enough to act as the blasting cap for the larger explosion of the
term's popularity, at least among the geek set.

Grant Barrett
gbarrett at worldnewyork.org

On Jun 24, 2005, at 03:11, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:

> For Arnold and any other snowclone connoisseurs out there... I
> recently
> noticed a snowclone with two basic variants:
>
> "What is this 'X' (that) you speak of?"
> "What is this 'X' of which you speak?"