What terms did people use before “Trope” and “Meme” took over? I hate those words, but they have supplanted the precedent terms in my brain.
I’m not sure if there were terms for them. The closest I can think of is ‘spin-off’ as in spin-off of a repost.
Cliche? Schtick?
Themes?
Theme? Idea? Paradigm?
“Trope” has been used in literary critique and philosophy for centuries. The usage in the sense of a stereotypical phrasing/setting in a work or discourse would come under cliché. As in, a gunfight as the final moral resolution is an allegorical trope in Westerns; that it happens down the middle of main street by quick-draw and the good guy only gets a flesh wound in the shoulder while he wipes out the bad guys, with no collateral damage, is a cliché.
ETA: And yes, some of the things TVTropes call “tropes” may really be themes or scenarios or plot/composition devices
“Meme” was coined by Richard Dawkins in the 70s and I get the feeling that for most who the time the word is used to mean something not quite the same as he intended.
I will never use the term meme except in posts to state I will never use the term meme.
I still think of memes as inside jokes, except the group in on the joke extends to most of the internet.
“Funky Town” playing in your head 30 years after it was popular is not my idea of an inside joke.
[SIZE=1]Actually I like that song, I just needed an iconic example.[/SIZE]
In different contexts they can mean things such as “catch-phrase,” “popular idea,” and “cliché” (as has already been noted).
“Meme” used in the context of an “internet meme” doesn’t have a good precedent term for obvious reasons.
In some settings, “fad” might be a suitable term, but not all.
“Motif” and “leitmotiv” come to mind. (Granted, a leitmotiv is a term from opera, but I’ve heard it used metaphorically in reference to other forms of art.)
That’s even better, as it stays on the favorable side from the usually negative implications of “cliché”.
I kind of like the idea of having a pair of pugs named Trope and Meme.
Or just get one and name it Syndrome.
That’s an earworm, not a meme.
And I’d like to add archetype to the lists of words.
To my knowledge, a well-regarded application of the use of meme is in Robert Wright’s book The Moral Animal. It makes the case of cultural anthropology, where communities - political entities from the primitive village to globalization evolve and adapt cultural artifacts just like bodies descent with modification a la Darwin. In that context, a meme is a unit of cultural knowledge - a better way to hunt, a better way to trade with neighboring polities, etc. - that survive based on fitness.
So that feels like a predecessor would be ***norm ***or cultural trait, but as meme has come to be used to represent fleeting cultural norms like rickrolling, it has taken on a faddish connotation.
I find the concept useful at both ends of the spectrum…
Motif is a good word, but to me it implies something that is repeated within the same work, not something that crops up in many works by different artists. The word I use instead of trope is cliche.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt a desire to express any idea for which the word meme would come to mind.
To the extent it is being used to discuss the evolution of an online fad/terminology, e.g., the “Keyboard Cat” meme - I am inclined to agree. There is an element of “be aware that folks apply Keyboard Cat to the end of video clips” which is pure fad. However, there is an element of “please be aware that, with emerging online models, folks are expected to create content and comment on each other’s content. One way they do that is to append endings to clips…” That element of meta-comment and how things like Keyboard Cat illustrate that - and what it says about how the internet is changing the way we build on each other - that is all tying into Dawkins’ original intent of meme as a cultural trait that can be tested for fitness and passed onto to successive entities…
I read The Selfish Gene thirty or so years ago. A few ideas stuck with me, but meme wasn’t one of them for some reason. I think it’s an apt coinage for what Dawkins was talking about. My reason for not using is that I rarely have occasion to talk about anything to which the word would apply; including online trends and terminology.