*Person* this, *Person* that— can it be used to vocalize annoyance?

Solution 1:

In short, yes, it's used to express annoyance.

As a native speaker of American English, I am familiar with this expression. However, I can't find anywhere on the internet that documents it, though I can find plenty of examples with the right searches.

The expression "X this, X that" is always used to express frustration with whatever X is, in my experience. This and that usually function like a placeholder for the predicate of sentences, to make the point that X is too often the subject. Sometimes, X is an imperative verb instead and this and that are placeholders for the rest of the sentence after that (the object), and the expression shows frustration for being told to X too many times.

I would say that I predominantly hear this, as opposed to seeing it written down, a fact that is clearly shown in the examples I've found as most of them are either from spoken English or very casual and thus close to spoken English.

From the internet, unknown dialects

Found via Google searches

Noun

• "Baby this Baby that........." Enough with the baby crap guys! It's getting old...my rant is officially over! — ArcheryTalk Forums

• Baby this, baby that.. Fuck off plz. — Reddit

• I got this shirt for my husband since football season starts in August 2021 and he’s football this football that and “wanna talk, talk football; if not, go away” — Etsy comment

• "My mum was going crazy. 'Football this, football that', she used to say. My parents were a bit strict on our school results, especially mum." — Football Ghana

• hehehe, well my brother sef, is a football fanatic, same as my dad, all i hear is football this football that — Nairaland Forum (Nigerian English?)

• gawd more **** about football!!! I am sick of seeing football this football that BLAHHH!! — GameFAQ Forums

• Every time I turn around its video games this, video games that. All the forums I read are plague by video games. — Kotaku discussions

Verb

• Hearing bad advice. This is just a given. From day 1, I've heard it all. Eat this, eat that, do this during sex, "just relax", "It'll happen when God's ready", "pray", "I heard about a couple who adopted and then got pregnant"...the list is a mile long. — Blogspot Blog

• What is interesting about this book is that rather than a typical "do this, do that" tome, it's a narrative told in the form of a story. Sure, some of it is a little hokey ("frog farmer"? Really?) but the brilliance of this is that it gets the point across in a way that isn't all "do this, do that" or preachy. — Amazon comment

American English

Found via COCA

• women this , women that, their isnt a woman on the planet who knows how to be a decent female — Comment on Men's Health article 50 Things Women Wish Men Knew

• All he talks about is the Yankees. Yankees this, Yankees that. Get a life! — Spin City (1997 TV show)

• In America it's bathroom this, bathroom that. Even a port john. What bathroom? — Northern Exposure (1994 TV show)

• A couple hours on Facebook, you know, was wedding this, wedding that. — CNN's Grace (TV)

• Know what cracks me up about commies? They're all' equality this, equality that,' and they're all chauvinists. — Collateral Damage (2002 movie)

British English

Found via the BNC. Even with the least restrictive searches (e.g. this PUNC NOUN that and NOUN this NOUN that) I can think of, I can't find more examples here. Not sure if this reflects the small corpus size or if it's just unheard of in British English

• It's always milkman this, and cream of that. Or they call me Ernie. They tease me in the pub... it's always milkman this, milkman that. — 3895 s-units (Central television news)