Catchphrases

The Question as posed by John-the-son:

What are those phrases upon which the emotional fabric of the day rests?

"the emotional fabric of the day" is an arresting phrase, with only a few google instances (touching on weddings and funerals), so it's available for us to interpret as we will. My take emphasizes le mot juste (which I've invoked repeatedly): some words, some ways of stamping one's own imprint upon the moment, are just RIGHT in ways that may be utterly idiosyncratic, and may even be difficult for others to grasp, or parse, or get snuggly with. Occasionally such phrases are disruptive, and fill much-needed gaps in discourse. My own resort to YCMTSU [You Can't Make This Shit Up] is a case in point: I use it to express my incredulity at the preposterous nature of some bit of "news" or some incomprehensible attitude or belief... though clearly somebody has unleashed something so feculent as to require comment on its ...bodacious mendacity.

ycmtsu

28viii2301

Makes a good t-shirt, but isn't a positive contribution, more a marker of my scorn —which is 'emotional fabric' of a sort.

Emotional fabric is woven, has a warp and a weft. It's usually the weft where the pattern is disclosed or becomes visible (though that might be over-thinking it).

Some words paraded themselves before my Mind's Eye. The first to recommend itself was Catchphrase [Wikipedia]

...a phrase or expression recognized by its repeated utterance...

(quoted from the marvelous and essential Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds [1880]):

walk where we will, we cannot help hearing from every side a phrase repeated with delight, and received with laughter, by men with hard hands and dirty faces, by saucy butcher lads and errand-boys, by loose women, by hackney coachmen, cabriolet-drivers, and idle fellows who loiter at the corners of streets. Not one utters this phrase without producing a laugh from all within hearing. It seems applicable to every circumstance, and is the universal answer to every question; in short, it is the favourite slang phrase of the day, a phrase that, while its brief season of popularity lasts, throws a dash of fun and frolicsomeness over the existence of squalid poverty and ill-requited labour, and gives them reason to laugh as well as their more fortunate fellows in a higher stage of society.

I started to collect instances of candidates, veering somewhat too far into popular cultural expressions and memes. Consider the example of "yada yada":

The phrase quickly grew to meme status (though I doubt it originated with Seinfeld... maybe Lenny Bruce...), and just maybe it qualifies as "emotional fabric"...

So here's a list of Formulas I have used to invoke or celebrate, phrases that MEAN something more than appears on the literal face of the expression, cultural idioms that may be difficult to translate or explain. They are shibboleths of a sort, recognized as epitomes by those who are in the know, but baffling to outsiders. The overall effect: shared markers of "yep, here we are again..." for the cognoscenti: slogans, mottos, taglines, watchwords... and we all have personal examples, though some may not savor them as I do.

...and so it goes. [Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5]

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Yeah, no. [ubiquitous]

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[round up] the usual suspects [Casablanca]

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can't win 'em all
...Boston Braves pitcher Cliff Curtis who said, "Oh well. You can't win 'em all,"
after losing his 23rd consecutive game during the 1910-1911 seasons....

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yes we have no bananas

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close, but no cigar

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cut to the chase

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something will turn up [Wilkins Micawber, in David Copperfield]

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we don't need no stinkin' badges [Treasure of the Sierra Madre]

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yeah, well... [Cool Hand Luke]

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The Dude abides [The Big Lebowski]

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Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like bananas [Whole Earth Catalog]

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**mumble** (Stephen C Root)

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lotta water over the dam

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**mutter mutter** (my own very very self)

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Don't be all thinky (Jervis, in Sun House)

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sauve qui peut (probably needs a page of its own linked here)

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Q.E.D.
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I don't know what to say...

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no words...

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etc etc etc (I'll add more as they occur to me)

Perhaps the essence is in the repetition of the phrase, such that it comes to be understood as vade mecum ("something a person carries about for frequent or regular use'; Latin "goes with me" like a handbook; an all-purpose remedy), always ready to be deployed into relevant circumstances.

Another word that harrumphed its way onto the stage is phatic, which I've generally used to demean content-free and conventional phrases. Come to find out it's much more glorious, and that took me into a book published in 1923 that was one of my mother's desk books: Ogden and Richards The Meaning of Meaning, which has a supplementary chapter by Bronislaw Malinowski [whose name would be recognized by any student of anthropology, but not perhaps by anybody else...] in which he coins the term 'phatic'

Phatic communication ... a type of speech in which ties of union are created by a mere exchange of words ... they fulfill a social function and that is their principal aim, but they are neither the result of intellectual reflection, nor do they necessarily arouse reflection in the listener ... Each utterance is an act serving the direct aim of binding hearer to speaker by a tie of some social sentiment or other. (315)

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The hypnopompic gift this morning was being reminded of Invocation, a word that I can trace back to the order of service in the Swedenborgian church of my youth: a conventional formula intoned by the minister and answered responsively by the congregation, to establish/instantiate the emotional fabric for the worship service. Here's one such from the San Francisco society (which was the locale of my father's first parish a century ago, 1924-1926):

Responsive Invocation:

Make me to know your ways, O Lord;
teach me your paths.

Lead me in your truth and teach me,
for you are the God of my salvation;

Be mindful of your mercy, O Lord, and of your steadfast love,
for they have been from of old.

Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions;
according to your steadfast love remember me,

O guard my life and deliver me;
do not let me be put to shame, for I take refuge in you.

May integrity and uprightness preserve me,
for I wait for you.
That's quite a mouthful, suffused with a sincerity I can recognize and dimly recall the feeling of, across a gulf of more than 65 years of personal alienation from organized religious observance