Conduplicatio (con-du-pli-ca’-ti-o): The repetition of a word or words. A general term for repetition sometimes carrying the more specific meaning of repetition of words in adjacent phrases or clauses. Sometimes used to name either ploce or epizeuxis.
“Bubble, bubbles, bubbles!” Turn on the bubble machine.” Somebody started the machine. Beautifully-colored bubbles filled the air, “Champagne, Champagne, Champagne” was chanted in unison as the 127th meeting of the “Lawrence Welk Appreciation Society, Chapter One” began and we toasted Lawrence Welk with small glasses of champagne.
We were Chapter One because we were the only chapter. We were located in Minnesota, the heart of Nordic America. Even though Lawrence was German American, he was adopted by Nordic Americans due to his Norwegian-sounding accent and the fact that he was born in Strasburg, North Dakota. His was a complicated trajectory to the namesake of our Society, but he opened the door of tolerance, and it was his magical accordion that did it.
It was rumored that Welk obtained his accordion from one of Odin’s Germanic god-buddies, Bragi, the Norse/Germanic god of music. Welk had ingested a pile of psychedelic mushrooms when he was doing a gig in late-1950s San Francisco. He was “beamed up” by the mushrooms to Valhalla where he was given the magic accordion by Bragi for the “Psychedelic Keying and Athletic Bellows Breathing” he made his accordion perform. The accordion’s magic was manifest in the hypnotic pumping of its bellow and the cutting tunefulness of its musical notes. It made middle-class mothers into Mata Hari’s and men into Zorro’s.
When he returned from his trip, Welk was given a TV show and the champagne bubblies flowed. “A one, and a two, and a three” became a catchphrase for impatience and “Turn on the bubble machine” became America’s most ubiquitous catchphrase stealing the crown from “Hot Damn.” Some people complained that “Turn on the Bubble Machine” had sinful connotations referring to sexual arousal. This line of criticism, and others, went nowhere. It was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Most Americans laughed at the critics, and Welk rode the crest of that wave, hanging ten all the way,
At our Society’s meetings we begin with a champagne toast to Welk, eat Lutefisk and slam down shots of aquavit. Between the three, things get wild and we turn on the bubble machine, but not before we watch an episode of “The Lawrence Welk Show” as a prelude to the gourmet dinner and alcohol-induced debauchery. Turn on the bubble machine! A one, and a 2, and a three.
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu.
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