[Ads-l] "You [X] 'em, we [X-rhyme] 'em"
Laurence Horn
laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Mon Jun 5 16:41:42 UTC 2017
Hmmm. Can we be sure it’s not one that’s run by necrophiliacs?
> On Jun 5, 2017, at 12:40 PM, MULLINS, WILLIAM D (Bill) CIV USARMY RDECOM AMRDEC (US) <william.d.mullins18.civ at MAIL.MIL> wrote:
>
> Funeral Home: "You slay 'em, we lay 'em."
>
>>
>> Back around 1980-81, I had a university acquaintance who would frequently answer with a selection from among these sayings:
>>
>> "City Morgue: You kill 'em, we chill 'em!"
>>
>> "City Morgue: You stab' em, we slab 'em!"
>>
>> "Abortion Clinic: You rape 'em, we scrape 'em. No fetus can beat us."
>>
>> Now I read in Hugh Gusterson's informative _Drone_ (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2016), p. 9, that,
>>
>> "'You Track 'Em, We Whack 'Em,' is the informal motto of the team at the National Security Agency that collects and analyzes ... cell phone
>> data [that may serve to identify the whereabouts of prominent terrorists]."
>>
>> Googling "You kill 'em, we chill 'em" turns up approx. one zillion instances of this pattern.
>>
>> How far back can this black-humor genre be traced?
>>
>> JL
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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