The Cliche

PECULIAR USE OF SET EXPRESSIONS

In language studies there are two very clearly-marked tendencies that the student should never lose sight of, particularly when dealing with the problem of word-combination. They are 1) the analytical tendency, which seeks to dissever one component from another and 2) the synthetic tendency which seeks to integrate the parts of the combination into a stable unit.

These two tendencies are treated in different ways in lexicology and stylistics. In lexicology the parts of a stable lexical unit may be sepa­rated in order to make a scientific investigation of the character of the combination and to analyse the components. In stylistics we analyse the component parts in order to get at some communicative effect sought by the writer. It is this communicative effect and the means employed to achieve it that lie within the domain of stylistics.

The integrating tendency also is closely studied in the realm of lexicology, especially when linguistic scholars seek to fix what seems to be a stable word-comb in at ion and ascertain the degree of its stabil­ity, its variants and so on. The integrating tendency is also within the domain of stylistics, particularly when the word-combination has not yet formed itself as a lexical unit but is in the process of being so formed.

Here we are faced with the problem of what is called the cliche.

A cIiche (1) is generally defined as an expression that has become hackneyed and trite. As Random House Dictionary has it, "a cliche... has lost originality, ingenuity, and impact by long over-use... A cliche strives after originality, whereas it has lost the aesthetic gene­rating power it once had. There is always a contradiction between what is aimed at and what is actually attained.

'rosy dreams of youth', 'the patter of little feet', 'deceptively simple'.

Cliche is a derogatory term. 'Cliche' is not used to denote all stable word-combinations, whereas it was coined to denote word-combinations which have long lost their novelty and become trite, but which are used as if they were fresh and original and so have become irritating to people who are sensitive to the language they hear and read. If it has become familiar, that means it has won general recognition and by iteration has been accepted as a unit of the language.

There are two conflicting ideas: language should always be fresh, vigorous and expressive, and, on the other hand, language should make use of units that are easily understood and which require little or no effort to convey the idea and to grasp it.

"When does an expression become a cliche? What is trite to one person may still be fresh to another. When you are listening to a speaker, you can accurately anticipate what he is going to say next, he is pretty certainly using cliches, otherwise he would be constantly surprising you."

We are gathered here today to mourn ('the untimely death') of our beloved leader...; Words are inadequate ('to express the grief that is in our hearts').

"Similarly when you read if one word almost in­evitably invites another, if you can read half of the words and know what the other are, you are reading cliches."

We watched the flames ('lick­ing') at the side of the building. A pall ('of smoke') hung thick over the neighbourhood...; He heard a dull ('thud') which was followed by an omi­nous ('silence')?

The author has been led into the erroneous notion that everything that is predictable is a cliche. He is confusing useful word-combinations circulating in speech as members of the word-stock of the language with what claims to be genuine, original and vigorous. All word-combinations that do not surprise are labelled as cliches. The following stable and necessary word-combinations used in newspaper language must be viewed as cliches: 'effective guarantees', 'immediate issues', 'the whip and carrot policy', 'statement of policy', 'to maintain some equilibrium between reliable sources', 'buffer zone', 'he laid it down equally clearly that...'.

R. D. Altick thus denounces as cliches such verb- and noun-phrases as 'to live to a ripe old age', 'to grow by leaps and bounds', 'to withstand the test of time’, 'to let bygones be bygones', 'to be unable to see the wood for the trees' ', 'to upset the apple-cart', 'to have an ace up one's sleeve'. And finally he rejects such word-combinations as 'the full flush of vic­tory', 'the patter of rain', 'part and parcel', 'a diamond in the rough' and on the grounds that they have outlasted their freshness. If a linguist does not take into consideration all the properties of the given word or word-combination, the intricacies of language units, it will be difficult for him to differentiate a cliché or the right word in the right place.

Men-of-letters, if they are real artists, use the stock of expressive phrases contained in the language naturally and easily, and well-known phrases never produce the impression of being cliches.

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