+- Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum (https://www.scivillage.com)
+-- Forum: Culture (https://www.scivillage.com/forum-49.html)
+--- Forum: General Discussion (https://www.scivillage.com/forum-48.html)
+--- Thread: Why Do We Hate Cliché? (/thread-450.html)
Why Do We Hate Cliché? - C C - Jan 9, 2015
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/books/review/why-do-we-hate-clich.html
EXCERPT: [...] Usually clichés are used correctly and unthinkingly. So correctly and unthinkingly that mostly we don’t hear them, especially when we say them ourselves. The ways in which canned speech — even the can is now canned! — obstructs thinking, obscures evil and turns us into unknowing automatons have been very intelligently and thoroughly considered already: George Orwell’s essay “Politics and the English Language” and George Carlin’s comedy sketch on “shell shock” (about how “shell shock” became “battle fatigue” became “operational exhaustion” became “post-traumatic stress disorder”) are particularly precise and witty. If you are looking for important thinking about cliché, I would go look at either of those pieces before reading the rest of this column. The Carlin bit is about euphemisms, but any popular euphemism is as much a cliché as linguine is pasta.
I can, however, think of one minor point about cliché that fits well into this narrow space. Clichés are like the old talismans dug up at an archaeological site. They often endure even when the times and places that produced them have passed on. When, for example, did we start to say “passed on”? When did glory start showing up in blazes and majorities become vast? When did war become something we wage? When did social commentary so often become searing, and was it around the same time that a certain demographic took a fancy to seared scallops? Why is lyrical something we wax, and why is a whip something we want to be as smart as? At some point someone’s goat was got, someone’s envelope was pushed and the mouth of someone’s gift horse was examined. None of these things happen any more. But we still use the old phrases, like hikers unrolling sleeping mats in the ancient temple at Petra....
- - - - - -
EXCERPT: [...] Clichés lend structure and ritual and glue: They are the subterranean passageways connecting one life to another. They obstruct alibis of complexity and exceptionality, various versions of the notion “It’s different for me.”
The question of clichés is partially a question of purpose and genre: Clichés might offer the consolation of company in a broken world; that doesn’t necessarily make them art. I’ve certainly felt my own resistance to clichés and their overhandled polish. But I’ve also come to recognize that I resist them for good reasons and bad ones: I resist them because I want to grant room for nuance and complexity; but I also resist them because I’m afraid of the fact that in certain basic ways my experience is just like everyone else’s, and I deeply want to believe in the exceptionality of my own interior life.
[...] Clichés work against us when they replace our tongues entirely, when the greeting card messages supplant our own. They work best when they link our singular experiences rather than efface them — when they function as dangling strings around which the rock candy of individual experience crystallizes....
RE: Why Do We Hate Cliché? - elte - Mar 29, 2015
Often times they are a way to make communication more at ease, like George Carlin said--euphemistic.
RE: Why Do We Hate Cliché? - Magical Realist - Mar 29, 2015
Here's some cliches I know I use. One thing about them, when I use them I feel a twinge of pride in myself. As if I've connected my point to some well-known truism or motto. The meaning of the cliche is so accepted and understood it seems to lend credibility to my opinion. Like I'm giving sage advice or something. Ofcourse that's just an illusion. It's an argument ad populum: the populace's tried and true principle as it were. As if I'm saying "Everybody agrees with me." But it underscores WHY we might like using cliches over having them recited to us.
In any way, shape, or form
Speak truth to power
Last time I checked [when used in a sarcastic way]
Think outside the box
When the rubber meets the road
Hit the ground running
A perfect storm
Connect the dots
Light at the end of the tunnel
It is what it is
Throw under the bus
Mission-critical
Drink the Kool-Aid
Reinvent the wheel
To make a long story short
Let’s cut to the chase
Beating around the bush
Read my lips
Low hanging fruit
Put a bug in his ear
Running on empty
Face the music
Throwing out the baby with the bathwater
Push the envelope
Ride the storm out
Fight fire with fire
Between a rock and a hard place
Speak of the devil
What comes around goes around
If looks could kill
Dropped the ball
See you coming
Working hard or hardly working?
Tomorrow's another day
Baby steps
Apples and oranges
Make it rain
Beside myself
Taken to the cleaners
Take your medicine
Marches to a different drummer
Make a mountain out of a molehill
No dog in this fight
Fall all over yourself
Cut off your nose despite your face
Stab me in the back
Preaching to the choir
Get off your soapbox
Wolf in sheep's clothing
Jump the broom
Colder that a witch's tit
Not over till the fat lady sings
Kicked the bucket
Ship has come in
With a grain of salt
Screwing the pooch
On the gravy train
Jump on the bandwagon
Going cold turkey
Falling off the wagon
Don't burn your bridges
Don't look a gift horse in the mouth
Don't bite the hand that feeds you
Don't put all your eggs in one basket
Get your feet wet
A leg up
Break a leg
Pulling my leg
Lying thru your teeth
Jumping thru hoops
Bending over backwards
Making lemonade out of lemons
Miss the boat
A trainwreck
Beating a dead horse
Over the moon
Fly solo
Winging it
Weak link
Water under the bridge
Head over heels
Like a babe in the woods
Cut your losses
Look before you leap
Like a needle in a haystack
Twist my arm
Spilled the beans
Let the cat out of the bag
Goose is cooked
Working like a dog
Cat's meow
When pig's fly
When hell freezes over
When the chips are down
Basketcase
Bat's in the belfry
Lost your marbles
Off your rocker
In the groove
Not playing with a full deck
The cat's pajamas
In the doghouse
Blind leading the blind
Eating crow
Sourgrapes
Toe the line
Hitting the jackpot
Dumb as an ox
Dumb as a bag of hammers
The way the cookie crumbles
Rock the boat
Break the mold
Take the cake
Icing on the cake
Have your cake and eat it too
Like a walk in the park
Like stealing candy from a baby
Off the grid
Hand over fist
See the light
Talking up a storm
The whole nine yards
7 ways from Sunday
Got your goat
Steal your thunder
Skin a cat
Get off the pot
No skin off my back
By the skin of my teeth
Beauty is skindeep
Small change
Lone wolf
Heard it thru the grapevine
Watch your p's and q's
Grab the bull by the horns
Caught red-handed
The last straw
A stone's throw
Don't cast the first stone
Eyes wide open
Blaze your own trail
Down the rabbit hole
Up shit creek without an oar
That ship has sailed
Walk on eggshells
Without a lick of sense
Look what the cat dragged the cat in
Armed to the teeth
Strong as an ox
On a shoestring budget
On cloud 9
Rattling the gates
Pull some strings
Strike a chord
Dangling by a thread